Natasha Henstridge

About Natasha Henstridge

Natasha T. Henstridge (born August 15, 1974) is a Canadian actress and former fashion model. Her most notable on-screen roles include Species, The Whole Nine Yards, The Whole Ten Yards, It Had To Be You, Ghosts of Mars, She Spies, the TV series Eli Stone, and the Canadian TV mini-series Would Be Kings, for which she won the Gemini Award for best actress. Her most recent regular role is as Dawn Chamberlain in the TV series The Secret Circle.

At the age of 14, Henstridge entered the Casablanca Modeling Agency's "Look of the Year" contest and was chosen first runner-up. The following year, she went to Paris to pursue her modeling ambitions. At 15, she was featured on her first magazine cover, the French edition of Cosmopolitan. Several more magazine covers followed and Henstridge went on to do television commercials for products such as Olay, Old Spice, and Lady Stetson. Her modeling career established, Henstridge moved on to a career in movies.

In her 1995 film debut Species, Henstridge played Sil, a genetically engineered alien/human hybrid created from a message received by SETI, who breaks free from the captivity of a laboratory. Pursued by a team of experts who band together to stop her before she multiplies, Sil embarks on a killing spree while also discovering her powerful instinct to mate. Species was an instant hit, making $113 million (USD) at the box office. Notable for its sexual content, the film won Henstridge the MTV Movie award for "best kiss" for a scene in which her character, while kissing an aggressive would-be suitor, impales his head on her tongue. In 1998, she played Eve, a more ambiguous genetic duplicate of Sil, in Species II, which was a failure at the box office.