I decorated 3 Christmas movies in 1 summer

In between semesters of full time acting school, Hayley supports their training by returning to Toronto and decorating Christmas movies in rep.

Hayley with an old barn chandelier they Christmasified for hours on a ladder. Also, these light fixtures didn’t work anymore, so we lit them by stuffing with fairy lights on the inside of the lampshades!

There’s an ethos surrounding Christmas movies in the film industry as being the gigs that “pay the bills” during slow seasons. Although I took these movies to pay for my acting training at Stella, I was unknowingly accumulating ones of the top 5 working experiences I’ve ever had.

Working with our director, Lane Shefter Bishop was an effortless relationship. It’s like finding your soulmate; you know when it just works with someone. She knows exactly what she’s making, who her audience is, and she adjusts her expectations in an egoless way. On our first day of filming, she called the cast over the walkie to make an announcement, “I have two rules on my set. Don’t be an asshole, and have fun.” That’s when I knew this was going to be an incredible summer.

We bonded as a cast and crew in ways I had never seen before. There was literally no divide between us. When we were staying at the resort for our second movie, we would spend our evenings swimming in the lake or starting a fire on the beautiful beach. Even after working a 12 hour day, we wanted to spend more time together. That’s a very rare working experience. It didn’t even feel like work. By the third movie we had a flow to our teamwork that had a foundation in love and trust. I made some of the best friendships in my life, and we are still friends to this day.

Hayley and the crew playing Smash in between set ups at the resort.