Lisa Berry

Toronto television keeps a small pool of dependable series actors in constant work, and Berry has been in it for roughly twenty years: credits across every genre, most of it in supporting roles that recur rather than lead. The credits run through Combat Hospital, 19-2, Cracked, Nikita, Skins, Slasher, Bad Blood, Shadowhunters, Workin' Moms, Ghostwriter and Departure.

The role that travels furthest is Billie on Supernatural, a recurring part introduced late in that show's very long run and steadily promoted in importance. It works because Berry plays her with an unhurried, faintly bored gravity, as somebody for whom the leads' crises are an administrative matter. That is a hard note to hold on a series built almost entirely out of urgency, and it is why a guest character became one of the show's better late-period additions.

Film has mostly used her in single scenes: an EMT in Saw V, a receptionist in Antiviral, a newscaster's voice in Humane. The two exceptions are The Colony, where she is one of the survivors in a frozen post-collapse bunker, and Power Rangers, where she plays Billy's mother. She has an upcoming part as Director Bass in Infiltrate. It is a career of small, well-judged pieces rather than a breakout, and the consistent quality across two decades of Canadian television is the achievement.