Polly Shannon

While she hasn't broken out internationally, Canadian actress Polly Shannon has played an array of supporting roles for film and television and has earned accolades (and award nominations) for her performances. She acted in theater productions as a girl before becoming a model at age 13, which gave her the chance to travel the world for her work. She made her first TV appearances in 1992, including a guest spot on the spooky Nickelodeon series "Are You Afraid of the Dark." She subsequently found small parts in other series as well as films, leading to top-billed turns in two TV movies, first as a seductive teen in "The Girl Next Door," and then as the wife of a troubled hockey player in the biopic "The Sheldon Kennedy Story."

Though both pictures earned her Gemini Award nominations, she mostly played supporting parts afterwards. In 2002, she played two different ditzy characters, in "Men with Brooms" and "Trudeau," appearing in the latter as the wife of the former Canadian prime minister. She has battled such typecasting by varying her roles to include more respectable characters, such as doctors and detectives.