Victoria Pratt Biography

When Victoria Pratt was born on December 18, 1970 in Chesley, Ontario, the residents of the tiny Canadian town had no way of knowing that they had a future Amazon Queen with a blue belt and swift legs in their midst.

Something of a tomboy in her youth, Victoria nurtured her athletic side and became an accomplished runner by the time she entered Toronto's York University one year ahead of the rest of her class. While there she ran on, competing in the Commonwealth Games while consistently making the Dean's list. She graduated summa cum laude with a degree in kinesiology.

She turned down a scholarship for a master's program in physiotherapy to begin working in the university's athletic performance testing facility and co-author a book on fitness. The latter project led her to ask her former professor Robert Kennedy, the publisher of such fitness magazines as Oxygen and MuscleMag, for some pictures of athletes for the book. Instead, the camera was turned on Victoria when Kennedy convinced her to give fitness modeling a try, and then encouraged her to take acting lessons.

After posing for still cameras for some time, Pratt committed herself to acting lessons for two years. After completion, she got an agent and landed her first job as co-host of Go For It, a Discovery Channel series about non-traditional outdoor sports. Around the same time she had a successful first audition for an acting role, and landed a guest spot in the John Woo television series, Once a Thief. She was so good that they quickly made her a regular.

In 1998, she was on a plane to the Philippines to visit some friends on the set of their film, Legacy. During her flight, she was asked to replace an actress who had just dropped out, and was whisked away to wardrobe upon debarking. Suddenly, she was face to face with lead actor David Hasselhoff.

After the cancellation of Once a Thief, Pratt moved to Los Angeles. She soon won the first of many sci-fi roles she was perfectly suited for, as Cyane, Queen of the Amazons, on Xena: Warrior Princess. Though she appeared in only two episodes, her part was memorable. Around the same time she appeared in the pilot of an Aaron Spelling pilot called Forbidden Island that was never picked up. Both of these projects brought her to New Zealand for filming.

Being Canadian, Pratt leapt at the chance to audition for the sequel to the Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas-led classic, Strange Brew. She even turned down a lead role in the sci-fi series, Cleopatra 2525 in order to film the movie. But when financing of the film fell through, she returned to the producers of the USA series just in time to hang on to her role. Cleopatra 2525 had a strong start in 2000, but was cancelled nonetheless.

In 2001, Victoria Pratt played a cowgirl alongside Meat Loaf and Kristin Davis in an HBO film called Blacktop, but her part was cut out of the story. It was shot in Vancouver, and while there Pratt made an appearance in the action sci-fi series, First Wave.

Vancouver proved to be lucky for Victoria, as it was there that she found out that a part in a Marvel series was being written specially for her. The role was that of Shalimar Fox, a tough girl with both human and animal DNA, and the show was called Mutant X. So far, it's proving to be the reliable job she has always deserved.

Mutant X is filmed in Toronto, and while there, Pratt won a role in an independent film called The Mallory Effect, starring model Josie Maran. For weeks she applied her athletic endurance to a grueling schedule that took her back and forth between daytime shoots in Toronto and nighttime shoots in Montreal for The Mallory Effect. The hard work has paid off: The show is still successful and the film was selected for the opening night gala slot at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.

Though Victoria claims she wants to open an Oyster Bar when she's older, you can count on seeing a lot more of her in the years to come.

VICTORIA PRATT PICTURES

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VICTORIA PRATT BIOGRAPHY