NATASHA HENSTRIDGE FINDS A FAMILY NICHE
Former model, Hollywood hottie finds her niche in family fare
Actress Natasha Henstridge was talking to her mother on the phone the other day, discussing her past as an ambitious, strong-willed teenager or, as her mom prefers to call it, a “brat.”
Suddenly, it dawned on the 38-year-old actress and mother-of-two that her oldest son was now the same age she was when she announced her plans to leave their Fort McMurray home and go to Paris to pursue a modelling career.
She was 14 and had won a big modelling contest. Europe was the place to be. Her parents weren’t thrilled with the idea but they didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
“I said to my mom, ‘Can you imagine Tristan — who’s my oldest son — leaving home right now?’” says Henstridge in an interview from her home in Los Angeles to promote her upcoming TV movie Christmas Song. “The thought is so obscure and out there. It’s crazy, it wouldn’t even cross either of our minds, particularly his. I look back and my mom says ‘Yeah, but you were such a brat, you just kept saying you were going anyway and you were going to run away.’ She was right, I was such a brat.”
Henstridge’s story is one of those stranger-thanfiction fairy tales about sudden success. By 15, she had landed on the cover of the French edition of Cosmopolitan. Television commercials followed and, by 21, she had won her first starring role in a movie opposite Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker. She played Sil, a hot-to-trot predatory alien who goes on a sex-and-killing spree in the 1995 campy sci-fi favourite Species.
It was a bewildering ride, Henstridge admits.
“It isn’t for everyone,” she says.
“And I sure as heck wouldn’t let my own kids do it.”
Yes, things have changed for Henstridge in the past 20 years. For instance, who would have guessed that the woman who rose to quick fame as a statuesque alien — in one of the film’s more memorable scenes, she punctures a deficient lover’s head with her tongue — would increasingly have a career in family-friendly films and TV?
Christmas Song was produced for the U.S. Hallmark Channel and airs in Canada this Wednesday on CTV 2. Henstridge plays a classically-trained music teacher at an all-girl’s private school who must compete with a rival instructor (played by Heartland’s Gabe Hogan) from a all-boys school for one job after a merger. They enter their duelling musical acts into a televised Christmas song competition.
As you may have already guessed, sparks fly.
“I get offered those kinds of things quite a bit,” Henstridge says. “And I thought this one was cute. This one seemed quite fun and my character has a few little co- medic moments and it was really sweet and it turned out really sweet ... It’s very family oriented. It’s the kind of network here in the States where you can’t say ‘Oh my God.’ It’s not religious, but it’s very certainly innocent and geared toward that audience. And it has a huge audience here.”
Henstridge said she “turned the corner” a few years back, when a producer cast her opposite Harry Hamlin in the Hallmark film You Lucky Dog.
Among her upcoming projects is playing a mom in Against the Wild, about two kids and an Alaskan malamute trying to survive in the wilderness after a plane crash.
Henstridge was born in Newfoundland, but moved to Fort McMurray at the age of five. And while her teenage experiences may have made her more worldly than most her age, she admits her time in the modelling spotlight did not fully prepare her for movie fame.
In 1995, Species became an instant hit, eventually earning more than $113-million at the box office and spawning two sequels.
The newbie actress was suddenly in hot demand and in the media’s glare.
Sil’s unconventional mating habits led to Henstridge picking up the MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss.
In 1995, reporters covered her Fort McMurray wedding to Damian Chapa, a union that lasted only a year.
By 1996, her manager was denying rumours she would be the next Bond girl opposite Pierce Brosnan but confirming there was “a lot of heat” around his then 22-year-old client.
“Modelling was a very different thing than having been in that movie and then suddenly, within three or four days, having people really feeling like they know you,” she said.
“They were not just glancing because you are walking by and maybe you stand out because you are tall, but really looking at you in a very different way. I found it really disconcerting. I actually wasn’t a fan of that feeling at all. I really like my privacy, I liked being incognito. I did find it difficult.”
Henstridge had other high-profile projects, including starring opposite Bruce Willis in The Whole Nine Yards and its sequel and as the lead in John Carpenter’s thriller Ghosts of Mars.
She also found success on the small screen with roles on ABC’s Eli Stone and CW’s The Secret Circle.
In 2006, she won a Gemini for her part in the CTV miniseries Would Be Kings in 2006.
These days, choosing a role comes down to a number of factors: pay, the time it will require away from home, the other actors involved and the writing. She recently completed The Bronx Bull, a second biopic about boxer Jake LaMotta (The first being Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull) and a made-for-TV thriller called Cold Spring.
She said she returns to Fort McMurray fairly regularly, although admits she feels more of a connection these days to Newfoundland, where she has a second home. (In 2009, she famously convinced Conan O’Brien to drink Newfoundland Screech Rum and kiss a fish during an appearance on the Tonight Show).
But she still has a soft spot for Fort Mac, where she spent 10 formative years. “When I look back now, it was a wonderful place to grow up in terms of having freedom,” she said.
“It was one of those childhoods where you hopped on your bike and came home at dark. You walked to school, walked home, hung out with your friends. When I look at that now and the difference between that and how I’m raising my children, I’m really thrilled that I got to have that experience.” Besides, it had other benefits. “I think twenty-five below zero was when they let us stay in for recess or lunch,” she says. “One of the beauties of that is I’m a tough cookie. I can roll with the punches. All my friends, my dear good friends from L.A., are such wimps.”
I really liked my privacy, I liked being incognito.
NATASHA HENSTRIDGE