The Hollywood Reporter by Etan Vlessing March 12, 2017 7:15 PM
The Emmy winner nabbed the best TV actress prize for 'Orphan Black' and the best film actress award for her star turn in 'The Other Half.'
Orphan Black star Tatiana Maslany dominated the Canadian Screen Awards, her country's national film and TV awards, Sunday night by earning two best actress crowns. BBC America's and Space's Orphan Black also won for best Canadian TV drama.
Maslany first won the best film actress prize for her role in the indie romantic drama The Other Half. Accepting the award, she paid tribute to co-star and boyfriend Tom Cullen: "My Tom, my other half, you are electric and fearless and generous and the kindness you bring to set is inspiring and the bravery in your work is what I think of every day on set."
Maslany then stole the show by nabbing the best TV drama actress prize for her star turn in Orphan Black. "This is for all of my sestras, my beautiful sestras," she said on stage, referring to her fellow clones in the homegrown sci-fi series headed to its fifth and final season.
The Canadian actress last year won the Emmy for best actress in a drama series for her performance in Orphan Black. The clone drama, where Maslany plays a dozen look-alike characters, nabbed a field-leading 14 TV category nominations going into the Canadian Screen Awards.
Orphan Black in pre-broadcast prize-giving earned another seven trophies, including best direction and best writing in a dramatic series. In other TV acting categories, the best drama actor prize went to Adrian Holmes for his performance in the the cop drama 19-2, while SCTV alum Catherine O'Hara repeated as best comedy actress for her role in Schitt's Creek.
Elsewhere, Letterkenny won for best Canadian comedy, and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee nabbed the best comedy actor prize for his role in the homegrown sitcom Kim's Convenience. And Natasha Negovanlis, star of the LGBTQ web drama Carmilla, won the fan choice award.
In the film categories, Stephan James won the best film actor prize for his role in Race, the Jesse Owens biopic. And Xavier Dolan earned the best Canadian film and best film director prizes for his Cannes grand jury prize earner, It's Only the End of the World, starring Marion Cotillard.
The French language drama also earned Dolan the best adapted screenplay trophy and Vincent Cassel the best supporting actor prize. And House of Cards star Molly Parker won for best supporting film actress for her role in Weirdos.
America's Got Talent judge Howie Mandel hosted the Canadian kudos-fest, which honors homegrown film, TV and digital media content product. An emotional highlight of the evening was Hollywood comedy star Dave Chappelle introducing a tribute to the Just for Laughs comedy festival.
Chappelle recounted first coming to the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal in 1992 and discovering in Canada a kinder and gentler United States culturally, "like the little gay brother I didn't know we had." Other highlights included Christopher Plummer receiving a lifetime achievement award, an honor the Oscar winning actor attributed as much to his 87 years of age as his body of stage and screen work over a seven-decade career.
"I'm old. Dangerously old. I'm so old that when I was a baby, the first word I uttered was in Latin," a self-deprecating Plummer said before adding: "The curtain has not yet fallen. It's simply stuck." And Blackstone drama star Tantoo Cardinal was awarded the Earle Grey Award for her four-decade long acting career.
The Canadian Screen Awards are organized by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and aired on CBC.