Spotlight

Alison Pill spills about Milk

Sean Penn may be the one getting most of the attention for Milk, the bio-pic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay American to be elected to public office.

But 23-year-old Toronto native Alison Pill has the film’s truly unique role. She’s the only female character — Milk’s lesbian campaign manager, Anne Kronenberg. And she doesn’t even arrive on screen until halfway through the movie.

That’s because one of the issues addressed in this very honest film is the separation between the gay and lesbian communities in the 1970s, a separation that still exists today. “I think it’s just an incredible thing that Harvey did, that a lot of the gay movement can still learn from, and any other political movement can as well,” says Pill on the phone from New York City, the place she’s called home since moving there at 18 to pursue roles in movies (Pieces of April, Dan in Real Life) and on stage (Reasons to be Pretty).

“He took a huge risk in getting people to recognize they were fighting for the same thing. He brought [together] these parallel movements of not only the lesbian community, but the women’s movement, and he bridged a huge gap,” says Pill, who credits her start in acting to a combination of Canadian Content regulations and all the Toronto-shot TV movies of the mid-1990s.

When Kronenberg shows up at Milk’s busy campaign office on San Francisco’s famed Castro Street, his all-male group of supporters and hangers on greet her with confusion and fear. “She was too young to know that she couldn’t do it, and I just love that,” says Pill. “She just waltzed in and started organizing this group of fellas.”

As for that head fella, played by Penn, Pill says, “It was amazing. As soon as the camera was on you were watching Harvey. And then when it was off, it was Sean. And at first it was really strange because I’d look around and be, ‘Who’s that talking?’ Then I’d realize it was Sean, who I’d been talking to two minutes before, but inhabiting this completely different man.”