Cycling celebrity: Actor Tommie-Amber Pirie

Toronto’s Tommie-Amber Pirie jokes that she only does movies where bikes are in the main plot line, if not, “Then I’m not doing the movie!” she says.

Most recently, she played the leader of a motorbike gang in Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia and had some airtime riding a Harley. But as far as pedal bikes, she starred in a CBC TV show called Michael: Every Day where she filmed scenes riding around Ottawa. “I would ride on the street with the camera crew in the back of a van, with the trunk open leading the way,” she says. She was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for her work in the series.

She’s also used her bike to get to other shows and movies she’s worked on. “There have been a couple of shows that had their film studios down near Toronto’s lakeshore, and I would ride down to them. I really enjoyed commuting to work,” she says. “In a business where you can be so catered to, it felt like a normal thing for me to do to start and end my day.”