PHOTOS: Allegra Messina
PRODUCTION ASSISTANT: Kendra Powers
STYLING: Shalev Lavan for The Visionaries
MAKEUP: Kerrie Urban
HAIR: Dominique Diaz
WORDS: Thilda Riou
If you have been following The CW’s series The 100 for five years now, you must be pretty familiar with Marie Avgeropoulos. During the course of 6 seasons, the 33-year-old actress has been portraying one of the many fierce female characters on the show, Octavia Blake. ‘‘She is constantly changing into a different character almost every season, so she is such a pleasure to play,’’ Marie lets us know over the phone.
It’s such an honor to inspire young women and show them that they can be anything that they want to
The Canadian actress grew up in the small town of Thunder Bay, Ontario, and has forged her love for nature since then. ‘‘We did a lot of outdoor activities, like going camping, sitting around the campfire and fishing,’’ she recalls. Although Marie got a degree in TV Broadcast Journalism and didn’t realize that she wanted to pursue an acting career at first, she was already doing plays in high school. ‘‘I was constantly moving around because of my mom’s job and I kind of got bullied quite a bit,’’ she explains. ‘‘Being able to play different characters on stage gave me the opportunity to jump inside somebody else’s skin for a moment. It felt like therapy to me and that’s when I really found my love for acting and decided to pursue it further.’’
If you empower a girl, you empower change and you empower the entire community
Marie played several parts in different TV shows in the early years of her career, and she remembers being incredibly nervous during her first times on a set. ‘‘It all felt so surreal to me. I was taking everything in as almost a child would at Christmas time. I couldn’t believe I was actually there,’’ she laughs. ‘‘I feel really lucky to continue to have more opportunities like that.’’ As a matter of fact, all of those experiences led the actress to take on her outbreaking lead role on The 100. ‘‘When I first read the script, I knew that it had an amazing potential! I knew the opportunities were endless and that the story could take a million directions.’’
GRUMPY MAGAZINE 