Rachel Skarsten
Rachel Skarsten is an actor, born 1985.
Rachel Skarsten was still a teenager when she was cast as Dinah Lance in Birds of Prey, the short-lived 2002 DC series that has been a footnote in superhero television ever since. The catalog goes back further still, to Little Men and The Famous Jett Jackson in 1998.
Almost everything since has been genre television, and she has become very good at the thing those shows need most: a character who can be charming and dangerous inside the same line reading. Tamsin in Lost Girl is where it starts working. Alice in Batwoman is where it becomes the engine of an entire series, a performance pitched several degrees larger than everything around it and better for that. In between she spent several seasons of Reign as Elizabeth I of England, the least likely item on the list and the one that shows the range.
The film work has been supporting and mostly brief: Andrea in Fifty Shades of Grey, Leah in Molly's Game, Rose in The Vow. Imposters gave her Poppy Langmore in a comic register, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer represents the low-budget horror end of the same career, and she has done the television romance circuit as well, in In My Dreams and Timeless Love. It is an unglamorous shape for a career and a durable one: more than two decades of steady work, with one genuinely memorable villain in the middle of it.
Movies (7)
TV (10)
Where to start with Rachel Skarsten
Alice, in Batwoman, is the answer. Skarsten plays her as someone who has decided that being entertaining is a weapon, and the show is worth watching for that even when the plotting sags, which it does.
Working backwards, Lost Girl is the better series overall, and Tamsin arrives late enough that you get several seasons of setup first. Reign is the outlier: costume drama, a real historical figure, and the least Skarsten-shaped part she has had.
Birds of Prey is a curiosity now, interesting mainly as an artifact of what superhero television looked like before anyone had solved it. On film, Molly's Game is the best-made thing she appears in, though the role is tiny, and The Vow is the widest-reach one. Skip the television romances unless that is precisely what you came for.
The genre leads
Four genre shows where she was the reason to keep watching. Alice in Batwoman is an unhinged villain part she pushes far past what the show required, and her Elizabeth I in Reign is calculating rather than regal.
The films
The film work is thinner and mostly supporting, which is common enough for an actor who found her level on television. Molly's Game is the best script of the group and the one worth seeking out first.