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In HBO/Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls, created by Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble, Amrit Kaur plays Bela, who often finds herself in sticky situations for stopping at nothing to advance her comedy writing career.

“I’m very similar,” says the 30-year-old actress, who grew up in Ontario in a Sikh family. “I think my approach to acting is: There is nothing in the human experience that isn’t in me. I’m very ambitious. I love comedy. I love fashion. I am so desperate to be liked, I am so desperate to be the most beautiful. I’m so desperate to make everyone happy. Those are things that are the cusp of Bela.”

After graduating from theater school in Toronto, Kaur felt “I hadn’t learned enough, and I went around to so many acting studios.” The search led her to Gracemoon Arts Company and its founder,...

Descriptors that defined Jesse Owens – like speedy, smooth or brave – are not words likely to be associated with Race, the new biopic from director Stephen Hopkins. The 10.3 seconds in which Owens (played by Stephan James) changed the world unfolds over 134 plodding minutes, completely devoid of tension. Race is a story about an incredible man simply “being incredible,” rather than the circumstances that forced him to drastically defy the odds.

In line with expectations for clichéd biopics, Race begins with extraneous expositional dialogue, with Jesse’s mother, Emma Owens (Michèle Lonsdale Smith) informing her son that he’s “the first boy of mine to go to college,” then reminding him of the “lump” she removed from his chest at 5 that left him with a scar. As co-written by Frankie & Alice screenwriters Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, the screenplay feels stiff on a scene to scene basis, entering its worst stretches whenever...