Sacha Horler

Next up for the actress was her breakthrough role, that of the passionate, manic and demanding Cynthia, a young woman suffering from chronic eczema who falls in love with alcoholic asthmatic Gordon (Peter Fenton) in the gritty drama "Praise." Horler proved a courageous and dedicated performer to tackle the role, which featured several sobering sex scenes and a great deal of unromanticized nudity. Add in her character's chronic eczema, overbearing personality and bad dye job, and it is obvious that Horler had to become quite an unattractive person for the film, yet she brought to her character an odd and endearing dignity and charm. Horler's follow up supporting role in "Soft Fruit" called for the physical alterations of weight gain and wildly curly hair. In this funny yet harrowing examination of family, life and death, she played Nadia, the middle daughter of a woman (Jeanie Drynan) stricken with terminal cancer. Horler brought exuberant life to Nadia, portraying her both as a free-spirit and a fighter who sees more of her unstable father in herself than she'd like to. In 2000, both of these films saw release in the United States, further raising her profile. That year, she also had a supporting turn in the drama "My Mother Frank," starring as the married daughter of a widow (Sinead Cusack) who returns to school after her children have grown.