Birth Date : January 8, 1979Born the youngest by eight years of five children, Sarah began acting at age five when she appeared as Molly Monaghan in Disney's One Magic Christmas (1985). Showbusiness was a family business: her father is an actor, and her mother, who died of cancer in 1990, was a casting director and actress. Sarah's first big break came at the age of eight, when she starred as Ramona in the television series of the same name. In her fifth feature film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), she worked alongside the likes of John Neville, Eric Idle, Uma Thurman, Robin Williams and Sting, as well as her father.
In 1990, she played Jody in Sullivan Entertainment's TV movie Lantern Hill. Her performance as the little cockney waif won her a Gemini Award. Sullivan Entertainment was so impressed by her that she was cast in their next production, the long-running television series Road to Avonlea (1989 to 1996), in the starring role of Sara Stanley. As the series progressed, she asked to be written out of the script during the sixth season -- a move which had her character moving to France to study writing and her making only one appearance in the final and seventh season.
In 1994, Atom Egoyan's Exotica was released in which she played a small role as a girl hired to baby-sit a child that has long been dead. Three years later, Egoyan cast her again, this time in a starring role in The Sweet Hereafter.
Despite her success, Polley often claims acting is not something she sees herself doing forever. In an interview with CBC's The National she once stated: "The thought that I would be an actor when I grew up didn't even enter my mind. It was just sort of something I wanted to do for fun. And it sort of remained like that and still is. And I don't think I ever had any big transition where I decided I'm not going to be an actor, this isn't what I want to do with my life. I just sort of always knew that it wasn't my thing. It was just sort of something that I dabbled in and thought was sort of nifty."
Although she at one time hoped to attend university, Polley dropped out of high school and moved into her own apartment at a young age. She continues to act, despite her earlier protestations and has directed several short, independent films as well.