Rachel Skarsten

RACHEL SKARSTEN

Date of Birth: April 23, 1985

Toronto native Rachel Skarsten fell into show business when her father died. Only nine at the time, she sang at the memorial, and an agent later saw a video made of her singing at the event. Skarsten's first audition was for a cereal commercial, and she landed the spot.

The little girl already had a background in ballet, piano and cello, and when she proved to be talented at acting as well, she enrolled at Toronto's Claude Watson School for the Performing Arts.

At 13, the pretty blonde got her first big break when she landed the regular role of Bess on the PAX TV series Little Men. The series was shot in the Toronto area and the exposure led Skarsten to land guest roles on other shows such as The Disney Channel's The Famous Jett Jackson, which was filmed just a few miles down the road from the Little Men set, and PAX's Twice in a Lifetime, filmed in various locations around Toronto.

Although she played a prim and proper Victorian girl on Little Men, in real life Skarsten's primary interest is playing hockey, and shortly after Little Men ended its two-year run, she guest appeared on two episodes on Screech Owls, a children's series about a hockey team.

Skarsten was chosen for small roles in a couple of TV movies before landing a larger role in her first feature, Virginia's Run (2002). In it, she plays a girl who has lost her mother in a tragic accident, and she was able to draw on her father's death to understand her character's emotional devastation.

Before the feature was released, she auditioned for a new WB sci-fi series, Birds of Prey, to be filmed in Los Angeles. She landed the role, playing Dinah, a teenaged runaway who has strange visions. When Skarsten was asked to fly to LA to begin taping the pilot on the Sunday that the Canadian's men's hockey team was playing their Olympic gold-medal final, she managed to delay her flight until the next day, so she could watch the game.

Besides playing hockey, Skarsten lists her interests as watching hockey, reading about hockey and playing field hockey. She is the goalie for the Leaside Wildcats, a Double-A hockey team that won the Toronto City championships.

Other hobbies include sketching, painting, singing, swimming, horseback riding, cycling and rollerblading. Skarsten, who is of Norwegian descent and speaks Norwegian fluently, lives in Toronto with her mother and brother, John. She reunited with her Virginia's Run co-star, Kevin Zegers, for her second feature, Fear of the Dark (2002), filmed in Montreal.

After taking time off to attend university, Skarsten graduated from Queen's University with a BA with honors in English Language and Literature and a minor in Classical History. She returned to film with a starring role in Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (2007). Skarsten then starred in the film Servitude (2012). Her latest role is in the drama Molly's Game (2017).

Filmography:

Molly's Game (2017)
Servitude (2012)
Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (2007)
Fear of the Dark (2002)
Virginia's Run (2002)