Emily Hampshire

The Canadian Film Haven

Emily Hampshire was born in Montreal in 1981. There were no immediate red carpets or agents fighting over her contract in those early days. She started out in small productions where the budget barely covered catering. In 1996, she took part in Dead Innocent, and that experience shaped how she approached film sets.

For years she worked the independent circuit in her home country. She shot Boy Meets Girl in 1998 and The Life Before This in 1999. These were raw stories that demanded a very physical presence. But money was tight, and the local industry is a tough place for anyone trying to make a living as an actor without moving to Los Angeles.

Montreal is a frigid city for an actress without a commercial hit.

In 2003, A Problem with Fear arrived. For that role she received a nomination for the Genie Awards. It was the moment critics began taking notes on her name in press notebooks. But she chose to stay in Canada a while longer to refine a style that steered clear of cookie-cutter good looks.

Hampshire's Breakthrough Year: 2015

Sometimes the stars align in strange ways in production offices. In 2015, Hampshire's career exploded in two opposite directions that ultimately saved her from being forgotten. On one side, she accepted the role of Jennifer Goines in the series 12 Monkeys. It was a unhinged, electric character that let her scream and smash things on camera.

That same year, she premiered Schitt’s Creek. No one expected a comedy about a wealthy family ruined in a remote town to work outside its borders. She played Stevie Budd, who worked the front desk of a motel and wore plaid shirts that looked like they had seen better days.

Sarcasm was her best publicist.

The show took several seasons to break out globally. But when it did, in 2020, it swept the Emmy Awards with a historic clean sweep. Hampshire brought the dose of realism needed to keep the plot from floating off into pure absurdity. She finally earned a salary that reflected two decades of constant effort while working in the shadows as a supporting actress.

Maturity in the fantasy genre

After her run in comedy came to an end, she sought out projects that would let her get her hands dirty again. In 2021, she starred in the series Chapelwaite alongside Adrien Brody. It is a gothic horror story based on a story by Stephen King, where mud and blood are the everyday staples. So she left Stevie Budd's irony behind to face family curses.

In 2023, she shot The Rig for a streaming platform. Filming took place in Scotland, and the plot centered on an oil platform surrounded by supernatural fog. It was a physically demanding production that kept her for weeks in studios simulating the North Sea.

And the gamble paid off.

That same year she appeared in the movie Self Reliance. In 2024, she premiered Humane, directed by Caitlin Cronenberg. It is a dystopian thriller in which the government demands that families sacrifice one of their members to reduce the world's population. The budget for this latest Canadian production was estimated at around 7 million dollars before its international distribution.