Natasha Henstridge went from Newfoundland to Hollywood. Now she's back in creature territory.
Natasha Henstridge at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival for Below, Netflix’s Newfoundland-set creature thriller.
Photo credit: Josh Popov/WikiPortraits, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Natasha Henstridge was born in Springdale, Newfoundland and Labrador, in 1974, and lived with her family in nearby South Brook before they moved west to Fort McMurray when she was five. The Town of Springdale still includes her among its famous former residents, while Fort McMurray became the setting for one of her earliest experiences performing.
Henstridge has recalled appearing in a play at Keyano College when she was around 10 or 12 and discovering that she liked the energy of being onstage. Acting wasn't yet the plan. At 14, she placed second in the Casablanca Modeling Agency's Look of the Year competition, and soon she was modelling in Paris. She appeared on the cover of French Cosmopolitan, and within a few years she had moved from modelling into acting.
Her first major Hollywood role was Sil in Species, Roger Donaldson's 1995 science-fiction horror film. Henstridge was 19 when she landed the role, starring alongside Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker and Marg Helgenberger as the human-alien hybrid at the centre of the film.
Species gave Henstridge an unusually visible start to an acting career. She returned as Eve in Species II, and later film credits included Maximum Risk, The Whole Nine Yards and Ghosts of Mars. Thirty-one years after Species, Henstridge is appearing in another creature story.
Netflix's Below, arriving Oct. 8, is a six-part thriller set in the fictional Newfoundland community of Snooks Arm, where a mysterious sea creature begins terrorizing a town already facing the possible disappearance of its way of life. Henstridge joins an ensemble led by Josh Hartnett, Mackenzie Davis and Charlie Heaton, with Rohan Campbell and Mary Walsh also among the cast.
Created by Jesse McKeown, Below was filmed in Newfoundland, and McKeown has said he had wanted to set something in the province for years. He has spoken about the landscape and isolation he found there, along with the humour and eccentricities of its communities. Netflix describes the series as drawing on local myth while following a community dealing with change and the possible loss of its traditional way of life.
The connection to Species is hard to miss for anyone who remembers Henstridge as Sil. In the 1995 film, Henstridge played the creature being pursued. In Below, she is part of a Newfoundland community facing a mysterious sea creature of its own. The films and roles are separated by 31 years, with a career in between that has taken Henstridge well beyond the role that first made her widely known.
Springdale sits in north-central Newfoundland on the coast of Halls Bay. More than 50 years after Henstridge left the area as a child, the town still lists her among its famous faces, tracing the route from South Brook to Fort McMurray, Paris and eventually Species.
