Biography

Natasha Henstridge (born August 15, 1974) is a Canadian model turned actress who has starred in several movies, including Species and Species II. Born in Springdale, Newfoundland, she was raised in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. At the age of thirteen, she entered the Casablanca Modeling Agency's "Look of the Year" contest and was chosen first runner-up.

The following year, Henstridge went to Paris to pursue her modeling ambitions. At fifteen, she was featured on her first magazine cover, the French edition of Cosmopolitan. Several 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 decided to try her luck in movies.

While modeling in France gave Natasha the recognition she deserved as a beautiful woman, she quickly became bored by her job and did not feel that she was being challenged enough. She sought something more exciting and presented herself with a new creative challenge: acting. Blurring the lines between acting and modeling, Natasha's first role was in the science fiction feature film, Species. 

The role of Sil, the alien in a woman's body trying to get pregnant in order to reproduce her alien species, still demanded a beautiful face and figure, both of which Natasha possessed. She was chosen among over 100 other hopefuls, and although she was one of the less experienced women to audition, she succeeded in portraying her seductive yet evil character. 

Model-turned-actress Natasha Henstridge first earned fame to say nothing of notoriety as Sil, the human-alien clone with a deadly need to mate and reproduce in Species (1995). 

Due to the strenuous demands of her character, the blonde, willowy Henstridge was required to spend much of the film naked, something that inspired plenty of testosterone-laced men's magazine profiles but little chance for critical respect. However, the actress persevered, gradually finding work in films that focused on her verbal skills rather than her ability to shed her clothing.

Joining other models-turned-actresses such as Cameron Diaz and Rene Russo, Natasha has surely met her challenge of succeeding in another career. She has recently finished working on Second Skin, Kevin of the North and A Better Way to Die, and has starring roles lined up in The Judith Exner Story and Ghosts of Mars, in a role Courtney Love was originally set to play. 

Originally hailing from Springdale, Newfoundland, Henstridge grew up in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Leaving home at 14 to pursue a modeling career, she moved to Paris, eventually becoming successful enough to grace the cover of French Cosmopolitan when she was only 15. Henstridge also appeared in ads for Oil of Olay and Lady Stetson, but she soon realized that she was meant for a more creatively stimulating calling. 

Whether her starring role in Species could be deemed creatively stimulating is arguable, but it did provide Henstridge with her breakthrough. Unfortunately, she next opted for near-nonentity status in such critical missteps as the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Maximum Risk (1996) and Species II (1998), which was nowhere near as commercially successful as its predecessor.

Natasha won an MTV Award for Best Kiss, which she shared with her Species co-star. While Species was physically demanding, it was not enough of a role to consider Natasha a burgeoning actress. But more roles began to follow her feature film debut.

Henstridge broke into new territory with the romantic comedy Dog Park (1998), co-starring alongside Janeane Garofalo and Luke Wilson. She continued to flex her comedic muscles in 2000 with The Whole Nine Yards, sharing the screen with a cast that included Matthew Perry, Bruce Willis, and Michael Clarke Duncan. Later that year, she appeared in Bounce, a romantic drama about a man (Ben Affleck) who falls in love with the widow (Gwyneth Paltrow) of the plane crash victim to whom he had given his seat on a doomed airplane.

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