This Toronto actor has a side hustle — as a physician. Here's how she does it

McMordie’s story isn’t one of a post-pandemic career pivot. Not exactly, as she continues to manage her busy medical practice. On top of that, she has also turned her lifelong love of the performing arts into a second professional career. “Being just one thing can sometimes work for people, but it just never worked for me,” the 40-year-old physician and actor said in an interview shortly before the start of rehearsals.

McMordie is starring in a new revival of Rosamund Small’s 2014 play “Vitals,” about a paramedic, Anna, grappling with intense burnout all while working in an overstretched health care system. It’s a story McMordie deeply empathizes with, and one that somewhat mirrors her own experiences as a front-line worker, particularly during the pandemic.  

Though McMordie primarily works in sports medicine (she recently served as a Team Canada physician at the 2024 Paralympics in Paris), she, like many other doctors, was reassigned into various new roles when COVID-19 hit and her regular practice was shuttered. 

But while it was exciting at first to be on the front lines of what felt like a war effort, contributing to something that felt greater than herself, exhaustion soon set in for McMordie as the pandemic wore on. “Looking back, I was so burnt out as a doctor,” she recalled. “I think we all were as front-line workers during the pandemic.”

Around that time, McMordie signed up for a series of free online improv classes for health care workers, hosted by Second City. There, she connected with many other health care workers around the world, and also rekindled her love of the performing arts. 

“I’d forgotten about that side of me that had always been there,” said McMordie. “So, I just kept on going with those classes because they were so much fun.”

Little did McMordie know, however, that she had caught the eye of an acting agent during one of her Second City community showcase performances. “The agent reached out to me after the showcase and was like, ‘Have you ever considered doing a bit more of this?’ I hadn’t, but it just kind of built from there.”

Since then, McMordie has worked on both stage and screen. Recently, she appeared as Nurse Marcy in several episodes of the American medical drama “Doc,” which was filmed in Toronto. But “Vitals” marks her first stage project in the city, and it’s arguably her most significant. 

Small, who wrote “Vitals” in her early 20s, said she’s flattered that her play is being revived again. “It’s very affirming that someone with that medical background, like Janet, was drawn to this play,” she said. “A lot of the problems that are discussed in ‘Vitals’ have also honestly become worse — things like the opioid epidemic and funding cuts. But on the other hand, we are in a different place culturally and socially in terms of how we discuss mental health.” 

McMordie, who runs a podcast about other actors who got started later in life, is also outspoken about the need for doctors to lead well-rounded lives to better manage their stress. 

“When we go into medicine, the medical schools want the most well-rounded human beings ever,” she said. “And then they take that out of you, right? They’re like, you must only focus on medicine. Then we all burn out. And we’re seeing it all the time, not just in doctors, but it in nurses and paramedics too.”

According to a 2024 study of more than 2,000 public health workers in Canada, nearly four in five reported burnout during the pandemic. 

For McMordie, it was acting which helped her manage her stress. These days, she keeps her work as a physician separate from her acting. During rehearsals and the run of a show, she’ll have colleagues help cover her sports medicine practice. But both lines of work greatly inform one another: She’s a better doctor because she’s an actor, and also vice versa. 

“We’re always taught in medicine not to get too involved in your patients emotionally, because it’ll be too overwhelming. But I was in fact being too emotionally restrained, and that made me burnt out,” she said. “It was improv that made me realize that, because you can’t be emotionally restrained in acting. So, that opened me up to bringing the emotions back in my medical practice.”

“Vitals” runs until May 10 at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst St. Visit factorytheatre.ca or call 416-504-9971 for tickets and more information.