Canmore’s own Crystal Balint is reaching new peaks in her acting career with her latest role.
The 37-year-old actress has a starring role in the new TV series the Bletchley Circle: San Francisco airing on CityTV in Canada, ITV in the U.K. and Britbox in the U.S.
As one of four leading characters in a female driven drama series, it is a pretty big deal for Balint, who grew up in Canmore studying performing arts at Canmore Collegiate High School (CCHS).
Balint said as soon as she received the script for her audition back in January, she began to fall in love with the character of Iris Bearden, a 1950s woman living in San Francisco who used to work as a cryptographer in the Second World War.
“I was really drawn to the character,” she said. “I was immediately excited about it and knew about the original series.
“I was drawn to so many elements of the project.”
The eight episode series follows up on two seasons of the Bletchley Circle set in early 1950s England that follows a group of women who worked as code breakers at Bletchley Park during the war. In the original series, the women investigated crimes the police are unwilling to look into, by using their skills to unravel the complexity of each case they are drawn into.
The same is true for the spin-off series, which follows two characters from England to the San Francisco Fillmore neighbourhood to track down a serial killer with the help of two new characters.
Balint’s character sent a coded message to Jean McBrian and Millie Harcourt, played by Julie Graham and Rachael Stirling, at the end of the war. The two Brits find themselves hunting down a killer in the first episode and track down Bearden to help along with her friend Hailey Yarner played by Chanelle Peloso.
Balint’s acting career has seen her living in Vancouver since 2006, with the six years prior spent in Calgary after graduating high school in Canmore.
Her resume includes a long list of parts in various TV productions out of the West Coast including the L Word, V, Psych, Life UnExpected, Supernatural, Arrow, Mech-X4, Arctic Air, as well as stage roles in productions like Dreamgirls and Helen Lawrence.
“It was kind of a dream come true,” she said with respect to landing the part on the Bletchley Circle. “It was my first lead role in a series and I could not have asked for a more interesting and exciting character to play.
“I was so over the moon and so grateful they trusted me to bring Iris to life.
“I have been doing this for quite a long time now and I have had some really nice wins and been fortunate to work with fantastic people, but this is for sure the biggest opportunity I have been given in my career so far to be one of four women carrying this show.”
On the show, Bearden and her fellow sleuths deal with some incredibly complex issues facing American society in that era. From civil rights, the internment of Japanese Americans in the Second World War, the targeting of gay men for their sexuality, police corruption, the emergence of Vietnam as a potential conflict zone and hints of the Cold War – there’ s nothing that the Bletchley Circle shies away from.
But in its essence, it is also a story about the friendship that evolves between the four characters as they overcome adversity and prove themselves as adept investigators not willing to back down from a fight.
For Balint, part of the draw to the character was the era in which Beardon lived and the complexity of life in time where cracks were beginning to appear around the idea of the American Dream.
“For a number of years it was the land of promise and opportunity,” Balint said. “There were so many people who came to America, the West Coast and if we are more specific San Francisco, as it was a liberal welcoming place to be, but there was so much ugliness there too.”
The relationships between the characters really developed through the series within the context of encountering those hardships that society as a whole was grappling with. It is something Balint is keen to continue should the Bletchley Circle: San Francisco get a second season.
“I would love to be able to mine that a little bit more and find out how much more trouble we would get into,” she said. The seeds of her acting career, meanwhile, were sowed in fertile ground in Canmore.
Balint was a familiar face in the high school drama program under teacher Steve Carney, who challenged students to take on heavy topics in their productions.
It also included musical inspiration, whether under the direction of band teacher Roy Nasset of early childhood musical instruction from Kathleen Matheson.
“I think I always had an interest in the performing arts and singing growing up from a very young age,” Balint said. “As I grew older, I started to really love movies and TV … those interests were sculpted by the people who came into my life.”
At the age of about 15, she recalls attending a Jann Arden concert at the Banff Centre and hanging around afterwards to meet the singer in person.
She asked Arden what advice she would give a young aspiring performer and the musician told her to focus on an instrument and master it.
“I think that stuck with me,” Balint said. “I didn’t necessarily stick with an instrument and master it, but I found something that I love and I just stuck with it.”
The series was filmed earlier this year and the final episode airs Friday (Nov. 2) on CityTV.
