Early life

Kirshner was born in Toronto, Ontario, the daughter of Etti, a teacher, and Sheldon Kirshner, a journalist who wrote for The Canadian Jewish News. Kirshner is a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors; her father was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1946, and met Kirshner's mother, a Bulgarian Jewish refugee, in Israel. Kirshner's paternal grandparents were Jews from Poland. Kirshner had a middle class upbringing and attended Forest Hill Collegiate Institute but later graduated from the Jarvis Collegiate Institute. Kirshner studied Russian literature and 20th-century movie industry at McGill University in Montreal. Her younger sister, Lauren Kirshner, a writer, was involved in the I Live Here project.

Career

Kirshner found a talent agent at the age of 12, and was acting professionally by the age of 15. She made her film debut in 1993 in Denys Arcand's Love and Human Remains. She convinced her father to sign a "nudity waiver" to play a dominatrix. Kirshner won a Genie nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. The following year, she starred in Atom Egoyan's Exotica. In 1996, she appeared in The Crow: City of Angels. She also played Kitty Scherbatsky in the 1997 version of Anna Kareninna.

Kirshner also appeared in the first three episodes of 24 as the assassin Mandy in 2001. She would later reprise the role for the second season's finale and in the latter half of the show's fourth season. Also in 2001, Kirshner played Catherine Wyler, The Cruelest Girl in School, in Not Another Teen Movie. The character is primarily a spoof of Kathryn Merteuil (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Cruel Intentions, and was partially based on Mackenzie Siler (played by Anna Paquin) from She's All That. In Marilyn Manson's music video for "Tainted Love", which was featured on the movie's soundtrack, she made a cameo appearance as her character Catherine Wyler.

In 2004, Kirshner was cast as author Jenny Schecter, a main character in the drama series The L Word. She remained with the show for all of the show's six seasons through 2009.

In 2006, she starred in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia in which she plays the young aspiring actress, Elizabeth Short, who was mysteriously mutilated and murdered in 1947. While the film itself was critically panned, many reviews singled out her performance for acclaim. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com, in a largely negative review, notes that the eponymous character was "played wonderfully by Mia Kirshner..." Mick LaSalle wrote that Kirshner "makes a real impression of the Dahlia as a sad, lonely dreamer, a pathetic figure." J. R. Jones described her performance as "haunting" and that the film's fictional screen tests "deliver the emotional darkness so lacking in the rest of the movie." In 2010, Kirshner co-starred in the film 30 Days of Night: Dark Days which began filming in the fall of 2009. In 2010, she was cast as Isobel Flemming, a guest role on The Vampire Diaries.

In 2011, she voiced the title character in Bear 71, a National Film Board of Canada web documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

On April 20, 2012, it was announced that Kirshner would join the new Syfy series Defiance.

On October 9, 2013, it was mentioned on the Showcase blog that Kirshner would be one of several guest stars in season four of the television series Lost Girl.

Philanthropy

In October 2008, after seven years in production, Kirshner published the book I Live Here, which she co-produced with ex-Adbusters staffers Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, as well as writer James MacKinnon. In the book, four different groups of women and children refugees from places such as Chechnya, Juárez, Burma and Malawi tell their life stories. The book features original material from well-known comic and graphic artists including Joe Sacco and Phoebe Gloeckner. It was published in the U.S. by Random House/Pantheon. It was supported logistically by Amnesty International, which will receive proceeds from the book. After the release of the book, the Center for International Studies at MIT invited Kirshner to run a 4-week course on I Live Here in January 2009.

In popular culture

Kirshner was ranked #43 on the Maxim Hot 100 Women of 2002. She and Beverly Polcyn were nominated for Best Kiss at the 2002 MTV Movie Awards for Not Another Teen Movie. In 2011 it was announced that Kirshner would be the face of Monica Rich Kosann's jewelry collection.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1993	Love and Human Remains	Benita
	Cadillac Girls	Page
1994	Exotica	Christina
1995	Murder in the First	Adult Rosetta Young
	Grass Harp, TheThe Grass Harp	Maude Riordan
1996	Crow: City of Angels, TheThe Crow: City of Angels	Sarah
1997	Anna Karenina	Princess Yekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatsky, "Kitty"
	Mad City	Laurie Callahan
1999	Saturn	Sarah
	Out of the Cold	Deborah Berkowitz
2000	James Draminski	James Draminski	Short film
	Innocents	Dominique Denright
	Cowboys and Angels	Candice
2001	Century Hotel	Dominique
	According to Spencer	Melora
	Not Another Teen Movie	Catherine Wyler
2002	New Best Friend	Alicia Campbell
	Now & Forever	Angela Wilson
2003	Party Monster	Natasha
2005	Iris Effect, TheThe Iris Effect	Rebecca
2006	The Black Dahlia	Elizabeth Short
2008	Miss Conception	Clem
2010	30 Days of Night: Dark Days	Lilith	Video
2011	388 Arletta Avenue	Amy
2012	Barrens, TheThe Barrens	Cynthia Vineyard
2013	I Think I Do	Julia

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1989	War of the Worlds	Jo	Episode: "Loving the Alien"
1990	Danger Bay	Catherine Walker	Episode: "Live Wires"
1990-1991	Dracula: The Series	Sophie Metternich	21 episodes
1991	My Secret Identity	Alana Porter	Episode: "My Other Secret Identity"
1991	Tropical Heat	Cathy Paige	Episode: "Runaway"
1992	Tropical Heat	Sandy	Episode: "Stranger in Paradise"
1992	Road to Avonlea	Emily Everett-Smythe	Episode: "High Society"
1992	Are You Afraid of the Dark?	Pam Pease / Dora Pease	Episode: "The Tale of the Hungry Hounds"
1995	Johnny's Girl	Amy Ross	TV film
2001-2005	24	Mandy	7 episodes
2001-2002	Wolf Lake	Ruby Cates	9 episodes
2004-2009	L Word, TheThe L Word	Jenny Schecter	Main role (70 episodes)
2007	They Come Back	Faith Hardy	TV film
2009	Cleaner, TheThe Cleaner	April May	Episode: "Does Everybody Have a Drink?"
2009	CSI: NY	Deborah Carter	Episode: "Dead Reckoning"
2010-present	Vampire Diaries, TheThe Vampire Diaries	Isobel Flemming	6 episodes
2012	Kiss at Pine Lake	Zoe McDowell	TV film
2013	Surrogacy Trap, TheThe Surrogacy Trap	Christy Bennett	TV film
2013	Graceland	Ashika Pearl	Episode: "Pizza Box"
2013-2014	Defiance	Kenya Rosewater	15 episodes
2013	Lost Girl	Clio	3 episodes
2014	Reluctant Witness	Erin Villenueve	TV film, pre-production
2015	Bloodline	Sarah Rayburn

Video Games

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006	24: The Game	Mandy (Voice)

[ Source: Wikipedia ]