Holly Gauthier-Frankel
Holly Gauthier-Frankel is an actor, born 1979.
If you grew up on Canadian children's television, she was in your house constantly and you never learned her name. Born in Montreal in 1979, Gauthier-Frankel is a voice actress and voice director working out of a city with a very large dubbing and children's-animation industry, and the roles pile up accordingly: Fern Walters in Arthur, the title cat in Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, Rita in the Hugo films, Teri in the later run of What's with Andy?, Loulou in Wimzie's House, and Flora and Lockette in the Cinelume English dub of Winx Club.
Montreal children's animation has a particular sound, flatter and more matter-of-fact than the American equivalent, and she is a good example of why that works. Her kids sound like kids talking, not like adults performing childhood. You can hear it on Caillou and Mona the Vampire, and in the Arthur spinoff Postcards from Buster, where she carried Fern into a half-documentary format that put animated characters into filmed real locations.
She also had a completely separate stage life as the burlesque performer Miss Sugarpuss, a persona she retired in 2016. The recent work is on camera: small parts in On the Basis of Sex and Fatherhood.
Movies (2)
TV (4)
Where to start with Holly Gauthier-Frankel
Postcards from Buster is the best single showcase, because the format dropped its animated characters into real filmed locations alongside actual children speaking, and the voice work had to survive the comparison. Fern is the quiet, careful one, and Gauthier-Frankel plays her without any of the cutesiness that part usually attracts.
Caillou is the one everybody has heard of and has opinions about; she is not the title character, which may improve your experience. Mona the Vampire is the more entertaining series, about a girl who insists the world is supernatural and is largely correct.
For the on-camera work, On the Basis of Sex and Fatherhood are both small parts in decent films. Arthur, Sagwa and the Winx Club dub, the roles she is best known for, are not among the credits listed here.