-Who is Tiffany Lauren Bennicke?

Funny you should ask…that would be me! 🙂 I was born and raised in Jamaica, and between then and now, I’ve lived in the United States, England, spent months in Denmark and France, and now I’m happily living in Canada. I LOVE traveling and being surrounded by culture and languages that aren’t my own. I love, love, love, history, and I try to go to as many museums as possible when I visit a new country. I really enjoy learning about a country’s history, what happened there, understanding why the people there are the way they are, and how their culture manifested. I drink copious amounts of green tea, I’m vegan, and I am the proud guardian to a Bengal kitten. I relish spa days, showers, and baths – feeling clean and seeing my house clean are easily some of my favorite feelings. Some of my favorite TV Shows are: Succession, The Crown, Handmaids Tale, The Expanse, The Great, Game of Thrones (and I’m excited for all the prequels and sequels to G.O.T.!)

I habitually watch John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah (when he was on The Daily Show) I have no knowledge of sports cars (a Hybrid SUV is perfectly sufficient for me!) and I am clueless about sports – you don’t want me on your sports team! Haha!

However, I take great pleasure in free-diving (it feels a bit like bird-watching to me, but underwater with sea-life and corals) and just swimming in general…swimming in lakes, oceans, and naturally occurring bodies of water makes me very happy.

-What inspired you to become a screenwriter and an actress?

I never imagined I’d be a screenwriter to be honest, but after some gentle persuasion from my husband and a friend of ours, I realized I have stories to tell. From my childhood in Jamaica to who I am today, I feel as if I’ve lived many different lives. Those closest to me have seen multiple and varied versions of me. At the heart of it, I’ve always been me, but in different professions, different cultures, different friend groups, different languages – I have friends I physically spent every day with for months, where entire conversations were facilitated through Google Translate on our phones. I write because of life experience, and because I have something to say.

I feel the same way with acting – I act, because I have something to say and stories to tell.

Telling important stories will always be my highest priority, and I can only hope that I’ll be able to portray them as respectfully, authentically and honestly as possible.

-Do you think the cinema can bring a change in the society?

Yes and no. It was once thought that illiteracy and inaccessibility to books, encyclopedias and information, was the only cause for ignorance. Literacy rates worldwide have increased in the last hundred years, and education levels have improved with it. But today, even with all the worlds information at our fingertips and attainable by smart phone, misinformation and lack of good sense and judgement still flourish. I do believe cinema can inspire change for good, and bring awareness to issues we’d otherwise not be aware of. Controversial cinema does a great job of this, as suddenly the film or tv show in question, gets mainstream publicity as well. So, can cinema bring about change in society? Awareness, absolutely. Change? Yes, but not always.

-What would you change in the world?

Ha! That’s a fully loaded question. If I were to try and name everything, this paragraph would turn into a library. I would love to see an end to wars, mass shootings and world hunger. The gender wage gap closed and women with equal rights internationally. Accessible healthcare, as well as clean air, water, and shelter for everyone. I would love to see racism eradicated, a positive change in perception around mental health, and the idea that you can’t love or marry the person you love, extinguished. The world we live in is an incredibly beautiful, and diverse place. We as a species have defied the odds, walked on the moon, eradicated what once were incurable diseases, and are capable of many more awe-inspiring things…but we have SO much work to do as far as positive changes in the world and our international community.

-Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?

So many compelling things enter my mind when thinking of this question…but I believe we are on the brink of an exciting new frontier. Filmmakers may increasingly begin to use Virtual Reality technology for immersive, cinematic experiences. Audiences might be able to be fully immersed and interact with the story. The traditional flat screen that we’re used to, might be replaced with holographs or 3D projections, with some hyper-realistic CGI. Re-enactments of historical events could be recreated in an entirely new, sophisticated way. The film industry today is already beginning to prioritize diversity and inclusive talent, and I feel that as filmmaking becomes more globalized, this will continue well into the future. I feel that streaming would continue to dominate – we may see the emergence of new streaming platforms, and more specified platforms. All of this of course is speculation, but we’re already seeing glimpses of what’s to come. Whether any of this of openly embraced or not, I feel that it is all inevitable and it’s coming, and the best thing that we can do, is adapt.