Shirley Douglas
Birthday: Born in 1934-04-02 in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada
Deathday: 2020-04-05
Shirley Douglas, with a start in church drama and music, pursued acting seriously from a young age. After studies in London, she acted in British theatre and TV. Her marriage to Donald Sutherland bore twins, Kiefer and Rachel Sutherland. Engaging in American protest movements in the late '60s and '70s, she advocated for various causes, eventually returning to Canada in 1977. Her career flourished in film, TV, and theatre, embodying strong characters like Hagar Shipley in "The Stone Angel" and Marilla in "Anne of Green Gables." Known for her activism, she ardently supported Canada's healthcare system, advocating for its accessibility. Notably, she won a Gemini Award for "Shadow Lake" in 2000 and received an honorary doctorate from Ryerson Polytechnic University and the Diamond Award from the Variety Club. Shirley's father was Tommy Douglas, renowned for founding Canada’s healthcare system.
TV Credits
Corner Gas
Character: Shirley Douglas
Following the adventures of a bunch of nobodies who get up to a whole lot of nothing in the fictional prairie town of Dog River, Saskatchewan, Corner Gas focuses on the life (or lack thereof) of Brent LeRoy, proprietor of a gas station that is the only stop for miles around and a hub of action on the Prairies....
Franklin
Character: Narrator (voice)
Franklin is an Canadian educational animated television series, based on the Franklin the Turtle books by Brenda Clark and Paulette Bourgeois. The television series was named after its main character, Franklin the Turtle. It was produced by PolyGram Television, Alphanim, LuxAnimation, Nelvana, Neurones Enterprises, Reader's Digest for Young Families, TF1, Funbag Animation Studios, Europool, Mini TFO, and Family Channel, and syndicated by Summit Entertainment....
Degrassi
Character: Professor Dunwoody
The life of a group of adolescents going through the trials and tribulations of teendom at Degrassi Community School....
The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Character: Monica Logan
The New Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1985 to 1986, and on the USA Network from 1987 to 1989. The series is an updated re-imagining of the classic 1955 series Alfred Hitchcock Presents....
Robson Arms
Character:
Robson Arms follows the lives of the tenants in a once-grand low-rise in Vancouver's eclectic West End. The building is home to an unlikely collection of characters who live under one roof, yet occupy different worlds. One thing is certain, you'll never see your neighbours the same way again....
Hallmark Hall of Fame
Character: Schyler Noyes
Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The longest-running primetime series in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning during 1951 and continuing into 2013. From 1954 onward, all of its productions have been shown in color, although color television video productions were extremely rare in 1954. Many television movies have been shown on the program since its debut, ...
The Path to 9/11
Character: Madeline Albright
Beginning with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and ending on the morning of 9/11, the draws on detailed information from the 9/11 Commission Report to take viewers on an unforgettable journey through the events that presaged that fateful day -- to understand what went right and wrong, and what can be learned from this crucial eight-year period....
Road to Avonlea
Character:
In the fictional small town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, in the early 20th century, 10-year-old Montreal heiress Sara Stanley is sent by her wealthy father to live with her two maiden aunts, Hetty and Olivia King, to be near her late mother's side of the family....
Wind at My Back
Character:
A recently widowed mother loses her children to a cold mother-in-law in Ontario during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Based loosely on the books "Never Sleep Three in a Bed" and "The Night We Stole the Mounties’ Car" by Max Braithwaite...
No Price Too High
Character:
The Canadian contribution to World War Two was extraordinary in scale and variety. More than one million people, out of nation of just eleven million, volunteered to serve. To transform a small, virtually unequipped military into a powerful army, navy and air force was a remarkable achievement. No Price Too High traces Canada's involvement from the prewar years through 1945, explaining the events of the war in the context of the political and military realities of the time. There is none of the ...
Movie Credits
Lolita
Character: Mrs. Starch
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter....
The Christmas Shoes
Character: Ellen Layton
Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir....
Dead Ringers
Character: Laura
Elliot, a successful gynecologist, works at the same practice as his identical twin, Beverly. Elliot is attracted to many of his patients and has affairs with them. When he inevitably loses interest, he will give the woman over to Beverly, the meeker of the two, without the woman knowing the difference. Beverly falls hard for one of the patients, Claire, but when she inadvertently deceives him, he slips into a state of madness....
Mesmer
Character: Duchess Dubarry
A biography of the eighteenth century Viennese physician, Franz Anton Mesmer, who used unorthodox healing practices based on his theory of "animal magnetism."...
Redwood Curtain
Character: Schyler Noyes
Geri Riordan is adopted, half-Vietnamese, eighteen, and a piano prodigy. She also feels as if she doesn't know who she really is, and when her adopted father dies, she begins to search for her biological father....
Loose Ends
Character: Wife
When the zealous followers of the Church of the Divine Light collide with the heathen filmmakers heaven help those caught in the middle! Bishop Wally, the cult's corrupt founder, must liquidate his assets or face the wrath of the IRS, unaware that his too-slick tax advisor Lodz Kuckoff has unwittingly set the stage for calamity. Kuckoff promises a filmmaker, Liberty Jean, that he'll secure the million dollars she needs to make her dream project, an expose on sex in advertising. She reluctantly a...
Flash Gordon: Marooned on Mongo
Character: Additional Voices (voice)
Earth teenagers Alex 'Flash' Gordon and Dale Arden, and their reluctant friend Dr. Hans Zarkov, journey to the fantastic planet Mongo where they fight to defeat the evil planetary dictator, Ming the Merciless....
Turning to Stone
Character: Lena
Alison Campbell was sentenced to seven years after trying to smuggle drugs into Canada. This hard-hitting film tells the story of how she survived the prison system,and sacrificed herself to protect her inmates and saved her own sanity....
Shadow Lake
Character: Margaret Richards
A writer's mysterious disappearance on an ice-covered lake holds the clues to a missing gemstone and a grisly murder....
The Wars
Character: Mrs. Lawson
Robert Ross (Brent Carver) lives a protected adolescence in a well-off Toronto suburb. Secretive and withdrawn, he shares his thoughts only with his sister Rowena (Anne-Marie MacDonald) who is mentally disabled. He feels compassion for his weak and conventional father. He avoids any confrontation with his mother (Martha Henry), a dominating woman whose despondency at having given birth to a handicapped child has turned to bitterness. Rowena occupies a central position in Robert's existence of d...
Really Weird Tales
Character: Edna Besley (segment "Cursed With Charisma")
The movie consists of three odd and strange tales that each teach a different lesson....
A House Divided
Character: Elizabeth Dickson
In the aftermath of the terrible Civil War which has devastated the South, Amanda America Dixon returns home to find she has become the sole heir to a vast cotton plantation. But the dreadful secret which has blighted her life threatens to deprive her of the birthright which her beloved father David had struggled for so long to create. Raised by her father and grandmother to be the perfect white Southern Belle, Amanda's true mother was a black slave Julia. Confronted with the forces of greed and...
Shadow Dancing
Character: Nicole
Jess, a struggling dancer, is trying out for a part in a musical about Medusa. As she practices, the director notices how much she resembles his former lover, a ballerina who died in a bizarre on-stage accident while performing the exact same dance that Jess is doing. As more unexplainable coincidences surround the production, someone or something must be behind them all. But who? Or what?...
Shattered Trust: The Shari Karney Story
Character: Vivian Karney
A client's claims of incest cause an attorney to remember the traumas she suffered when she was a sexually abused child. Instead of debilitating her, it only motivates the lawyer to fight harder to change California's inadequate child-molestation laws. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi...
Sarah McLachlan: A Life of Music
Character: Narrator (voice)
The life of pop superstar Sarah McLachlan comes alive in this intimate documentary that has McLachlan talking about her fame, her loves, her family and her music. Learn about her relationship with her adoptive parents, when she first discovered her musical talent, and how she came up with the idea for the Lilith Fair music festival. The film also includes performances of hits "Building a Mystery," "Into the Fire" and "I Will Remember You."...
The Law of Enclosures
Character: Mya
Story of the same couple, first in their teenage years and then in their twilight years, paradoxically set in the same time during the backdrop of the Gulf War in the Middle East....
Barney's Great Adventure
Character: Grandma
Mom and dad dump son Cody, daughter Abby, her best friend Marcella and a baby on the farm with Grandpa and Grandma. Purple dinosaur Barney soon appears to entertain the kids, and when a large colorful egg deposited on a farm by a shooting star is accidentally carted off, Barney and the kids start their chase for it....
The Shower
Character: Marie
A feminine take on a Cassavetes drama, the film focuses on a group of women who have gathered for a surprise baby shower. However, as the female guests arrive (the household males having adjourned to an afternoon football game), the off-screen mother-to-be goes into premature labour, leaving the bored invitees to sip spiked punch and discuss the dearth of available men until the drunken boys return home, thus setting the stage for male/female confrontations, confessions and clumsy acts of copula...
Woman Wanted
Character: Peg
After the death of his wife, Richard hires a recently divorced housekeeper, Emma. Soon finding himself falling for her, his emotionally destructive son, Wendell, also grows attached to Emma, threatening to tear apart the family's already hostile relationship....