Actors, artists and writers from Langley

Langley’s screen and arts alumni are a scattered bunch. Some were born here and left young; some grew up here and still come home; one arrived as an adult, ran a sign shop for 28 years and ended up in the local museum’s collection. What links them is a line in print saying Langley, and that’s the test we used. Anyone we couldn’t tie to Langley with a source isn’t here.

Plenty of film and TV is shot in Langley with nobody local in front of the camera. That side of the story, from Jamestown to the Fort Langley station, lives in our Langley on screen section.

The pages

• 
  Born in LangleyAmanda Crew

  Monica in HBO's Silicon Valley, two Leo Awards, and a career that started in a Grade 4 play.

  Read the bio →
• 
  Raised in LangleyJacob Tremblay

  Room, Wonder, Pixar's Luca, and a Walnut Grove grad.

  Read the bio →
• 
  Grew up in LangleyChelsea McMullan

  Brookswood basketball recruit turned award-winning documentary director.

  Read the bio →
• 
  Born in LangleyWes Barker

  The stunt magician who fooled Penn and Teller.

  Read the bio →
• 
  Langley, 1950–1978Carle Hessay

  A sign painter by day whose dark, near-abstract canvases the local museum now collects.

  Read the bio →

More actors and TV faces

These are people Wikipedia or the local papers tie to Langley, but where we haven’t found enough to fill a proper page. Treat the Wikipedia-only ones as a starting point.

• Alisen Down. Born in Langley in 1976, according to Wikipedia. A Vancouver-based TV regular: Jean Barolay on Battlestar Galactica, Lillian Luthor on Smallville, Olivia on 12 Monkeys, and Bev on Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia.
• Jesse Giddings. Wikipedia says he was born in Langley, went to Langley Secondary, and moved back after school to run The Basement Venue, an all-ages concert space. He became a MuchMusic VJ in 2009, co-hosted the MuchMusic Video Awards in 2011 and 2012, and joined E! News as a correspondent in 2013.
• Zoey Siewert. The Aldergrove Star profiled her in 2020 as a Langley actress, then 13, starring in the Family Channel series Malory Towers, the only Canadian in the cast. She’d grown up in Langley, moved to Vancouver for work, and come back.
• Diana Frances. The comedian and writer lived in Langley until she was 13, says Wikipedia, before moving to Maple Ridge. She later ran Vancouver’s Rock Paper Scissors theatre company and won a Canadian Screen Award for writing an episode of Corner Gas Animated.

Langley Fine Arts School in Fort Langley, pictured at the top, turns up in several of these stories. The Advance Times noted in 2014 that producer Sage Brocklebank, a Langley Fine Arts graduate, talked the makers of the thriller Suspension into shooting in Langley and Fort Langley instead of Los Angeles. Musician Brock Phillips studied there too. Its 300-seat Chief Sepass Theatre is where Jacob Tremblay did his hometown Q&A in 2016.

Writers

• J. Jill Robinson. Born in Langley in 1955, according to Wikipedia. A short-story writer and novelist (Saltwater Trees, Residual Desire, More in Anger), with the Howard O’Hagan Prize and two Saskatchewan Book Awards among her honours.
• Ryan Knighton. Born in Langley in 1972, per Wikipedia. Best known for Cockeyed, a memoir about losing his sight, and C’Mon Papa. He teaches English and creative writing at Capilano University.

Visual artists

Carle Hessay has his own page. His closest friend, Leonard Woods, was a sculptor, composer and writer who co-founded the Langley Community Music School in 1969 and died in Langley in 2014 at 94; Kwantlen Polytechnic University gave him an honorary degree the following year. His best-known sculptures, a 1948 set of angels, are in a Vancouver church, not here.

Today’s Langley painters and makers mostly show close to home. The Fort Gallery is an artist-run centre that pops up in spaces around Fort Langley, and the Fort Langley Artists Group holds an annual fall show. The bigger picture, from theatre to camera clubs, is in arts in Langley.

On stage locally

Amanda Crew’s career started with a school play. To see local actors on stage today, start with Langley Little Theatre, Theatre in the Country and Bard in the Valley, which puts on Shakespeare in Douglas Park every July.

Know someone from Langley who belongs here, with a source that says so? Tell us.