Actors use a variety of ways to get ready to play a role that can range from months of research to gaining or losing massive amounts of weight. Ali Skovbye got ready for her starring role in the Lifetime film "His Perfect Obsession" by going to dinner and watching some movies.
It was no ordinary dinner, and there were specific things the young Canadian actor was looking for in the films as she was seeking any help in playing a character who is blind. In the made-for-cable production, Skovbye portrays a teenager who only recently lost her sight. She and her mother, Allison (Arianne Zucker), return to the mom's childhood hometown after the death of Allison's beloved aunt. That's where they encounter Bart McGregor (Brendan Murray), a sociopathic accountant who has been carrying a torch for Allison since high school.
"Originally, when I found out I had booked the role, I watched a lot of movies with blind characters and took a lot of notes," Skovbye says. "Here in Vancouver we have a couple of restaurants where you can go and eat dinner in the complete dark and your servers are blind. I went there to get the experience of what it would be like to be blind and to talk to the servers."
Skovbye did enough prep work that once she stepped on the set and got the director's vision for the character, she was able to handle the blind parts of the performance with relative ease. The rest of the acting demands came naturally because she has rolled up a long list of acting credits.
At the age of 5, she landed a supporting role in the feature film "Personal Effects" opposite Academy Award winner Kathy Bates, Academy Award nominee Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashton Kutcher. Since then she has worked on projects from "Smallville" to "Falling Skies." Along with the Lifetime movie, Skovbye currently can be seen in "Man in the High Castle" and "When Calls the Heart."
Skovbye loves to play comedic roles and the typical "tween" fare, but she's been attracted to parts that are more disturbing and feature flawed characters. As soon as she read the script for "His Perfect Obsession," Skovbye knew it was a role she wanted to play.
"I fell in love with the character. I did the play 'The Miracle Worker' (the story of Helen Keller) when I was 10 and have always wanted to play another character with similar challenges," Skovbye says. "When I read this script, I loved how strong she was and how intelligent she was."
Had her other research not been sufficient, she had one other major source for help. Her older sister, Tiera Skovbye, is an actor who currently plays Polly Cooper on "Riverside." The younger Skovbye had no interest in acting when she was very young because she was so shy, but eventually she caught the acting bug from her older sister.
The Skovbye sisters have worked on one film together, playing stepsisters in the 2017 Lifetime film "Secrets of My Stepdaughter." Being in scenes with her older sister was a little strange at the start for Skovbye, but by the end they were both ready to do more work together.
"When I book something, I am so incredibly excited and she is one of the first people I call," Skovbye says of her sister. "We are very supportive of each other."
There hasn't been a lot of time to find roles where they could work together because both have been steadily working. Skovbye booked her first commercial when she was 4 and has been landing roles on a regular basis since. One thing that has helped the young actor roll up so many credits is the increased amount of productions filming in Canada.
There has been talk of moving to Los Angeles once she's graduated from high school, but until then there are projects like "Supernatural" and "R.L Stine's The Haunting Hour" being produced close to home.
And, the long string of acting jobs continues for her. A day after wrapping up work on "His Perfect Obsession," Skovbye started work on the feature film "Breakthrough." It took her a couple of days of work for her to get past all the work she had done to play the blind character.
"The very first scene we were doing, I was pulling out my chair from a desk without looking at it. I had to remind myself I wasn't playing a blind character anymore," Skovbye says.
