One-time slasher flick queen Lenore Zann seeks role as N.S. NDP leader

Truro-Bible Hill MLA Lenore Zann tours a flooded in Truro, N.S. on Sept. 10, 2012. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan)

TRURO, N.S. -- Actor Lenore Zann thought she left Hollywood behind when she ran for the provincial NDP in Nova Scotia, but her welcome to politics was straight out of a celebrity gossip tabloid.

Zann had been on the campaign trail for less than a day in 2009 when a Liberal party volunteer tried to sabotage her chances by leaking a topless photo of her from a gig on the racy lesbian drama "The L Word."

The stunt failed, the volunteer was fired, and voters overwhelmingly elected an unruffled Zann to the legislature, where she hopes to return this spring as the NDP's newest leader after a leadership convention next month.

"If you're an actor, you have to develop somewhat of a thick skin," says Zann, 56, now in her second term as a member of the legislature.

To fans of the slasher flick genre, Zann is considered Canada's very own scream queen with a number of 1980s cult classics under her belt, including "Happy Birthday to Me," in which an elite clique of high school students are slaughtered in gruesome ways. In "Visiting Hours," which also stars fellow Canadian William Shatner, Zann plays a spunky young woman murdered at the hands of a misogynistic killer stalking a psychiatric hospital.

But Zann has no airs at Canada's oldest legislature in Halifax, where she's simply the member for Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River -- the blue-collar riding where she spent her youth.

Born in Sydney, Australia, to educator parents, Zann was a child when her family moved to Canada's East Coast and settled in Truro, a town of about 12,000 an hour's drive north of Halifax. By the age of 17, Zann was acting professionally at Halifax's Neptune Theatre and later studied drama and political science at York University in Toronto.

She has more than 100 credits in television, film and theatre -- everything from guest starring on the procedural drama "Law and Order" to voicing the character of Rogue in "X-Men: The Animated Series." Zann counts "The Marilyn Tapes," an off-Broadway musical she wrote on the life of Marilyn Monroe, among her personal favourites.

"I got a good review in the New York Times and that was very exciting," she says, sitting in her older home filled with books of poetry, plays and biographies that she shares with her two Shih Tzus, Aayla and Ruby.

With homes in Los Angeles, New York and Vancouver, Zann always intended to return home to Truro some day in hopes of opening a performing arts school. But running for office wasn't expected to be part of her script until a fateful visit to the provincial legislature to watch then-Nova Scotia NDP leader Alexa McDonough -- who has endorsed Zann in her leadership bid -- deliver a speech on International Women's Day.

Zann, then in her 20s, watched from the public gallery as McDonough's male colleagues tossed paper airplanes while the leader addressed the house.

"That was my introduction to the legislature," she recalls. "In some ways it hasn't changed too much, but I've never seen that."

A self-described serious person, Zann says she was inspired from that moment to enter public life. But she concedes she's had to work to be respected in the political realm and convince people to look beyond the blond hair and Hollywood past.

She hasn't acted since her first year as an elected politician, she sold her homes in other cities and is a fixture in her constituency where she runs a Shakespearean theatre program during the summer and attends fish-and-chips dinners with her father at the local legion.

"There is no ulterior motive behind this," Zann says in her raspy lilt. "I don't care about riches. I don't care about fame."

Her former caucus colleague, Graham Steele, said in a commentary for the CBC that Zann's background as an actor makes her stand out in a party still recovering from its pummelling in the last provincial election.

"In the casual sexism of Nova Scotia politics, Zann is sometimes dismissed as flaky, but that's dead wrong," wrote Steele, a former finance minister.

"Her background as a performing artist makes her distinctly different than the usual middle-aged male lawyers, doctors and teachers that we're accustomed to seeing in leadership roles."

Led by former premier Darrell Dexter, the NDP went into the 2013 vote with a majority government and escaped with just seven seats. Zann, who had a relatively low profile as a backbencher, was re-elected while Dexter and other cabinet ministers lost their seats.

"I don't underestimate her," says Gary Burrill, a United Church minister who is running against Zann for the leadership. "I have a good, strong sense of what a forceful and capable person Lenore is."

Longtime NDP politician Dave Wilson gives Zann credit but says his tenure makes him more qualified to lead the party into the future.

"She represents her riding quite well," says Wilson, a former paramedic first elected in 2003. "But I believe I have more experience."

Tom Urbaniak, a political scientist at Cape Breton University, says Zann could stand to gain the most from the NDP's preferential ballot system in which people vote once and rank their preference for leader.

"I think she's a very viable candidate and has run a very energetic campaign," he says. "You can certainly see a scenario where many of the Gary Burrill supporters and the Dave Wilson supporters would rank her second."

Whoever is chosen as leader at a convention on the weekend of Feb. 27-28 will be tasked with rebuilding the party. Zann says her priorities are education and the creative economy -- an issue of particular importance since the governing Liberals eliminated a key film tax credit last spring.

"If people underestimate me, it's just because they don't know me," she says. "They might look and see the facade, but I'm much deeper than that. Which is why Hollywood couldn't contain me, to be honest."