Recently we talked to Amy Stewart, the actress who played the lead role in "A Line in the Sand". Amy grew up in the Toronto, Canada area and now lives in Montreal where she attends the National Theater School of Canada. There are only 12 students in her class. Amy feels passionately about working in both theater and film/television. She has been acting professionally since she was 11, when she was cast in a popular television drama series called Road to Avonlea. Amy told us that "A Line in the Sand" was shot in the middle of a heat wave. "It was just unbelievably hot," she says. "People were afraid that we were going to faint! We had corsets and petticoats and woolen stockings and we were just drenched in sweat!" The crew supplied the actors with wet cloths to cool them off, and they took breaks under shade umbrellas. The cabin also helped, Amy said. A full-scale model of a Texas settler's cabin was built on location for this story. Amy's never been to Texas, but that heat sounds pretty authentic! Everything on the set was as close to authentic as possible, down to the wooden cart with wooden wheels that they used for travel. Amy says that acting in a historical setting heightens reality and helps you get into character. "It really takes you back in time. . .situations are heightened. . .we were fleeing from the Mexicans the whole time. . .the army was advancing, the war was on and we were aware of this the whole time. It's sort of like time travel." Even so, there's a difficulty in stepping back into another time and place. Amy has studied classical theater, and says that the language of historical dramas is different from contemporary dramas. "Expressions are different. . .people used fewer contractions and different colloquialisms. They would speak every word in a sentence rather than running them all together." One challenge with "A Line in the Sand" was the Texas accent. To help with the accent, they listened to one of the actors who had a good Texas accent and tried to copy his accent uniformly. "In Texas the accent is long and drawn out, because of the flat lands. People who study linguistics have a theory that if you live by the sea your accent will be lilting and rolling." It follows that if you live in a flat place you'll speak in a smooth, even way. Amy says playing a lead character is a lot of work. It's not the first time she's played the lead, but this particular story is very focused on the lead character, so it was a big role and she had to be on the set the whole time. Fortunately, Amy went to school with the actor who played Willis. They enjoyed a great working relationship on the set and ended up being really great friends. She says he still treats her like his little sister! Amy's an only child in real life, so brothers like Willis are the closest she gets to the real thing. (As brothers go, Willis isn't so bad!) What did Amy like about being Lucinda Lawrence? "The best thing (about Lucinda) is that she is very strong. And she had a real journey. She started very young, caring about trivial things, like hair ribbons, and the boy she liked. She was immature. When the war broke out she developed a realization of war and what that means. Her brother gets sent off. . .the people she loves start getting involved and it suddenly hits her that this is war, this is life. There's a real coming of age and maturing to this character. Towards the end of the story, she helps her aunt have a baby, and snaps her mother out of the despair she's fallen into." Lucinda's attitude is positive and determined: "'. . .we've got to keep going, we've got to keep moving on'. . .There's a real sense of hope at the end because she knows that the army is victorious." Amy likes the Dear America stories, and thinks the characters are important for young girls to see. In her spare time, Amy likes to sing. She also knits. She says she's not very good, but in rehearsals (where she spends a lot of time) she says it helps occupy her when she's not in front of the camera. She doesn't spend a lot of time on computers, but thinks she might be able to get a friend to show her how to do it. (Will visiting the Dear America Web site give her an incentive? We hope so!)