Karen Cliche

Montreal Asphalt and the Leap into Fantasy

Karen Cliche wasn't chasing fame when she started walking the runways in Montreal in the late 1990s. Her goal was to pay the bills while figuring out how to break into Canadian film. In 1999, she landed her first credited role on the series Misguided Angels, and that experience changed how she saw the craft.

Television was her main battleground.

In 2001, she landed a role in Vampire High and with it her first serious encounter with the fantasy genre. That series about reformed vampires let her explore a dark aesthetic that suited her sharp features. But her real physical leap came in 2003, when she joined the cast of Mutant X.

Replaced the lead actress in the third season and took on the role of Lexa Pierce with the coldness the storyline needed. She had to learn fight choreography in record time. The Marvel production pace at the time left no room for mistakes or delays on set.

Swords, Aliens and the TV Market

In 2005, she starred in Young Blades, playing a woman disguised as a musketeer. Filming in European studios gave her a different perspective on international co-productions. So she decided her career would not depend exclusively on the major Hollywood studios.

Not every project went as planned.

In 2007, she took on the role of Baylin in the Flash Gordon version for the Syfy channel. That alien warrior was her last major ongoing action role on the small screen. The series never got past its first batch of episodes due to ratings in the United States. Only 21 episodes aired before the project was officially canceled.

From 2010 on, her appearances became more selective and focused on the TV movie format. In 2017 she took part in Killer Mom, and in 2018 she shot The Black Widow Killer. These are fast-paced productions that demand precise acting skills to shoot ten script pages a day.

The industry continued to count on her for roles as authoritative women.

In 2021, she shot the TV movie Galentine’s Day Nightmare under director Roxanne Boisvert. Post-production was completed in Ottawa during the final quarter of that same year. The final cut was delivered to the Lifetime network with a running time of exactly 87 minutes of footage.