Helen Shaver

Helen Shaver is a Canadian actress and director born on February 24, 1951, in St. Thomas, Ontario, where she grew up alongside five sisters. She is recognized for a career spanning film, television, and stage, including a Broadway appearance in Neil Simon's Jake's Women in 1992, for which she received a Theatre World Award.

Shaver's screen career began with a series of Canadian film roles in the late 1970s, including parts in Outrageous!, Starship Invasions, Who Has Seen the Wind, and High Ballin', all released in 1977 and 1978. Her performance opposite Tom Berenger in the 1978 romantic drama In Praise of Older Women earned her a Canadian Film Award for Best Lead Actress. She continued building her film profile with appearances in The Amityville Horror in 1979 and The Osterman Weekend in 1983, the final film directed by Sam Peckinpah. In 1985, she starred in Desert Hearts as a 1950s university professor who falls in love with another woman, a role she played alongside Patricia Charbonneau; the performance earned her the Bronze Leopard Award at the Locarno International Film Festival. The following year she appeared in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money as the love interest of Paul Newman's character, "Fast" Eddie Felson. Additional film credits include The Believers (1987), a Canadian Screen Award nomination for the 1986 drama Lost!, The Craft (1996), Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996), and Down River (2013). She won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a drug-addicted prostitute in the 2000 independent feature We All Fall Down.

On television, Shaver co-starred with Beau Bridges in the short-lived NBC series United States in 1980, developed by Larry Gelbart, and the following year appeared in the drama series Jessica Novak. She guest-starred on Hill Street Blues and T.J. Hooker, appeared in the 1984 Canadian production Countdown to Looking Glass, and in 1990 guest-starred in the Columbo episode Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo before co-starring on the series WIOU. From 1996 to 1999, she played Dr. Rachel Corrigan, a widowed psychiatrist, on the Showtime horror series Poltergeist: The Legacy, a role that earned her a Saturn Award for Best Actress on Television nomination.

In the mid-1990s Shaver transitioned into directing for television, ultimately helming more than 50 productions. Her directorial credits include episodes of The Outer Limits, Judging Amy, Joan of Arcadia, Medium, The O.C., Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The L Word, Jericho, Journeyman, Private Practice, The Unit, Crusoe, Orphan Black, Vikings, 13 Reasons Why, Westworld, and Station Eleven. In 2003 she won a Gemini Award for Best Direction in a Dramatic Series for the Just Cause episode "Death's Details." Her feature-length directorial debut came with the 1999 television film Summer's End, which earned her an Emmy nomination for directing. In 2023 she won a Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing in a Miniseries or TV Film for directing episode eight of Station Eleven. Across her directing career she also accumulated three Directors Guild of Canada Awards, two Canadian Screen Awards, and three Women's Image Network Awards. Her first theatrical feature film, Happy Place, premiered at the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival and screened at the 2020 Vancouver International Film Festival. In 2021 she received the Living Legend Tribute at the 23rd Women's Image Network Awards. Shaver was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2004.