Mary Walsh
Mary Walsh is a Newfoundland actor, writer, comedian, activist and mother. Among her many awards and doctorates, Mary is also the recipient of The Order of Canada and the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the Performing Arts.
No stranger to television audiences, Mary Walsh may be best known for her work on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, CBC’s wildly popular take on current affairs. The series, which she also created, earned her many of her numerous Gemini awards and showcased her dynamic range of characters, including the flagrantly outspoken ‘Marg Delahunty’.
Walsh wrote, produced and starred in the Gemini award winning Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, and more recent television credits include CBC’s Republic of Doyle, Global's Rookie Blue, and HBO Canada’s Sensitive Skin, for which she was nominated for a 2017 Canadian Screen Award.
Mary Walsh has enjoyed an exciting film career and has played roles in more than 15 films to date. She was nominated for two Genies for her performances in feature films Crackie (Official selection at TIFF) and New Waterford Girl. Later this year her Hatching Matching & Dispatching film A Christmas Fury will be released, in which she stars and also wrote.
Mary Walsh has been a rabid fan of books since childhood, taking in as many as she could get her hands on and even at one time hosting a CBC Television show called Open Book where she discussed recently released or historically important books with celebrities and friends. But, until now, Mary had never written and published her own Novel. Crying For The Moon (Harper Collins Canada) comes out on April 18th.
In Crying For The Moon, Mary Walsh has created the unforgettable Maureen Brennan, a young woman coming of age in late 1960s St. John's, Newfoundland. There is no one like Maureen, the second youngest daughter of the Sarge, a mother so bitter, so angry about her fate that she bullies her children and her husband before anyone else has a chance to. Maureen's dad, once gorgeously young, is now a beaten-down man who tells his best stories when he is drunk.
School is torture, with the nuns watching every move she makes. Oh, but Maureen wants a bigger life. She wants to go to sexy, exciting Montreal and be part of Expo 67, even if it means faking her way into the school choir. Once there, Maureen escapes the vigilant eye of Sister Imobilis and sneaks out into the city where, over the course of a few hours, and after a series of breathtakingly bad decisions, she changes the course of her life forever.
All Maureen really wanted was to get her life going. Even now, with everyone and everything against her, Maureen has one thing that nobody can take away: she is the indomitable Maureen—a young woman who is so much more than anyone thinks.
Feeling natural within a series of jokes and humorous moments, Mary Walsh has created many comedic characters that have gone on to live among the hearts of audiences for years. Marg Delahunty’s debut on 22 Minutes (CBC) marked the launch of a cultural icon who would stand up to the nations most powerful and speak the words the rest of us wish could be said but never had a platform to get out.
Outside of the film, TV and theatre world, Mary is an outspoken advocate for mental health and addiction awareness. Among the many charities and organizations she supports are the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health in Ottawa, the CNIB, St. Joseph’s Hospital and CAMH. She has been quite outspoken in politics, most recently launching a full scale attack on Stephen Harper in the 2015 Federal Election campaign when her character Marg Delahunty rolled out her “Marg Brings Change” campaign.