Helen Shaver

I am too old to add Helen Shaver to my list of childhood traumas. No doubt many of you cannot say the same thing. Which she is familiar to me, at least, as the deeply repressed Vivian from Desert Hearts and the joyously trashy Grace Downs in The Craft, she’s an icon to Millennials for what appears to be her only voice role. If you’re a certain age, you can hear her voice in your head telling you to let your heart guide you and that you must listen closely because it whispers. I’m not sure people of any other generation know what I’m talking about.

Shaver is, of course, part of the Canadian Pantheon. Her TV debut was on Gibsons, BC-set The Beachcombers. While her film debut was as far as I can tell Spanish-language, it was filmed in Canada. While she was born in Ontario, she seems to have moved into the BC film industry. With The Amityville Horror, she started working in the US as well, but she’s continued working at least part time in Canada as her career continued.

It seems likely to have been on the set of The Color of Money when Martin Scorsese suggested she try directing. (She was fourth-billed and played Paul Newman’s love interest.) At least, if IMDb is correct and he was the one to suggest it. It could have been on the episode of Amazing Stories he directed and in which she appeared, though, since that was the same year. However, the first thing she directed was in 1998, an episode of Dead Man’s Gun. Though not the episode on which she appeared.

Since then, she has both acted and directed, though her recent focus has primarily been directing. While she continues to work in Canada, she also directed, among other things, eleven episodes of Judging Amy and one of the most chilling episodes of Joan of Arcadia. Since then, she’s done a decent amount of high-profile television, including Lovecraft Country. (The episode “Meet Me in Daegu,” for the record.) As well as Canadian things like Anne With an E.

So yeah. Littlefoot’s mother, sure. If you’re the right age, that’s who she is to you. But she’s had a long, interesting career and is still going. She’s directed. She’s acted. She’s iconic. She’s Canadian. We adore talking about that kind of person around here, especially when you don’t realize exactly how much of your life that person has been a part of.