Caroline Dhavernas

Montreal's Instinct

Caroline Dhavernas never had to search for her calling, since movies were already part of everyday life at home. The daughter of two Canadian actors, she started dubbing voices in Montreal studios when she was only eight years old. By age twelve, she was already voicing the French version of characters on the series The Baby-Sitters Club, and from that moment on, working in front of the microphone was her real school.

In 1990, she made her on-screen debut with a small role on Quebec television. But her real entry into the American market came years later with the science fiction series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne in 2000. Dhavernas learned early that in this industry language is a survival tool, and she perfected her English so she wouldn't be trapped in the French-speaking market.

And the gamble paid off.

Bryan Fuller spotted her during a casting call and decided she had to be the lead of his new project. In 2004, she played Jaye Tyler in Wonderfalls, a philosophy graduate who worked at a gift shop and talked to plastic animal figurines. The series was canceled by Fox after airing only four episodes due to low ratings.

That professional milestone didn't slow her pace of shoots in Canada. In 2008, she starred in the historical epic Passchendaele, a film about World War I that became one of the most expensive productions in Canadian film history. The film grossed 4.4 million dollars in its home country and won the Genie Award for Best Motion Picture.

Her Love Affair with Psychological Thrillers

Their professional relationship with Fuller resumed in 2013 with the premiere of Hannibal. The creator was so convinced of her talent that he changed the gender of the original character from the novels, Dr. Alan Bloom, so she could play the role. For three seasons, she played Dr. Alana Bloom in an atmosphere of aesthetic horror that brought her global visibility.

But the end of the series in 2015 did not lead to an immediate leap into major Hollywood productions. Dhavernas preferred to return to her roots and choose projects with more dramatic weight in her homeland. In 2017, she landed the role of Mary Harris in the series Mary Kills People, playing a doctor who secretly practiced euthanasia.

It was a risky choice given the socially charged subject matter of the script.

The production stayed on air until 2019 and allowed her to explore a much drier, more direct register. In 2017, she also took part in the independent film Easy Living directed by Adam Keleman. In this film, she played a self-destructive cosmetics commercial model, one of her rawest performances outside the mainstream.

In 2022, she returned to the suspense genre with the series Classé secret, playing Rachel Miller. The plot dives into the world of espionage within Canadian intelligence services and showcases a more physical side of the actress. Filming of the second season of this drama wrapped in 2024 on location in Montreal and the surrounding areas of Quebec.

Dhavernas currently lives away from the spotlight in Los Angeles and prefers to manage her career from her hometown. In 2024, the series Classé secret confirmed its international distribution across several European streaming platforms. The series' production contract includes a strict confidentiality clause regarding the final budget per episode.