Broadcasting Lee became a
VJ for
MuchMusic in 1995, hosting MuchMusic's alternative music show
The Wedge. In 1995, on the day that sexual orientation was held to be protected under
section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by the
Supreme Court of Canada in the
Egan v Canada case, Lee celebrated the decision by kissing a woman on the air. She later appeared on the cover of
Xtra! in 1997. During her last appearance as a MuchMusic VJ in 2001, Lee and her co-host turned their backs to the camera, and mooned the audience on live television. She became the new host of
CBC Radio One's Saturday afternoon pop culture magazine radio-show
Definitely Not the Opera in 2002.
Definitely Not the Opera completed its run in 2016. During the Summer of 2008, Lee was a member of the CBC Olympic broadcasting team for the Beijing games. During the games, Lee filmed a TV spot that touched upon concerns regarding human rights and political issues. In 2016, Lee hosted the 10 episode summer series
Sleepover for CBC Radio, which continued as a podcast until 2018. In 2020, Lee hosted
Landscape Artist of the Year Canada, a Canadian adaptation of
Landscape Artist of the Year, for
Makeful.
Film work As a feminist, Lee specifically works on films that discuss feminist and/or racial issues.
Escapades of One Particular Mr. Noodle (1990) was her debut as a feminist film director. This film was produced by
Studio D, a primarily feminist film production company, as one of the short films in their segment
Five Feminist Minutes (1990). Lee played the lead character Alessa Woo, alongside fellow Canadian actor
Adam Beach, in
Helen Lee's 2001 film
The Art of Woo. Lee also has a smaller part in
John Cameron Mitchell's film
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing Kwahng-Yi, a guitarist in Hedwig's rock band made up of Korean-born army wives. In 2003, she became the centre of controversy when Mitchell first announced that he was casting Lee in his film
Shortbus (released 2006). Due to Mitchell's announcement that the film was to be sexually explicit in nature – Lee and other cast members perform non-simulated
intercourse and
masturbation on screen – the CBC initially threatened to fire her. In making
Shortbus, Mitchell sought to make a film about love and sex without censoring itself. Celebrities such as director
Francis Ford Coppola,
R.E.M.'s
Michael Stipe, actress
Julianne Moore and artist and musician
Yoko Ono, as well as the CBC's listening audience, rallied behind her, and the CBC ultimately relented. The movie premiered at the 2006
Cannes Film Festival. Her performance in
Shortbus earned Lee the 2007
International Cinephile Society Award for Best Supporting Actress. This was not her first film that explores a sexually explicit nature. She acted in
3 Needles (2005), a short film about HIV and AIDS. The film takes place in various locations around the world - Canada, China, and South Africa - demonstrating the universality of
STDs/STIs. In 2012, she was chosen to play
Olivia Chow in the biopic
television film Jack, alongside
Rick Roberts as
Jack Layton. The film aired on
CBC Television in 2013. She subsequently won the 2014
Canadian Screen Award for
Best Performance by a Lead Dramatic Actress in a Program/Mini-Series. Lee stars in, wrote and directed
The Brazilian segment of the 2008 film
Toronto Stories. Her feature film directorial debut
Year of the Carnivore premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival in 2009. Lee, Litovitz and
Buck 65 also collaborated on the film's soundtrack, which garnered a
Genie Award nomination for
Best Original Score at the
31st Genie Awards. Her second feature film as a director,
Octavio Is Dead!, premiered at the
Inside Out Film and Video Festival in 2018, and received several
Canadian Screen Award nominations at the
7th Canadian Screen Awards.
Theatrical work In 2013, Lee wrote and starred in a theatrical performance show
How Can I Forget? at Toronto's
Rhubarb and Summerworks theatre festivals. She and Litovitz also staged
Morrice Fled: Two Paintings Talk to Each Other, a pop-up performance at the
Art Gallery of Ontario based on the art of
James Wilson Morrice, in January. In 2014, Lee choreographed a dance solo for Syreeta Hector as part of
On Display for Toronto Dance Theatre. From 2015 to 2017, she created and directed
Sphere of Banished Suffering with dancers Jenn Goodwin, Mairi Greig, and Charlie McGettigan with Litovitz developed in residencies with LUFF art+dialogue,
Dancemakers, Artscape Sandbox, and premiered at the Festival of New Dance 2017. In 2019, she wrote and appeared in
Unsafe, a documentary theatre production on the topic of
censorship, at
Canadian Stage. ==Discography==