Adelaide Kane
Adelaide Kane is an actor, born 1990.
Australian soap opera, then a children's action series, then America. Kane, from Perth, came up through Neighbours as Lolly Allen and Power Rangers RPM as Tenaya 7, neither of which is listed among her credits here, and then made the jump most Australian actors of her generation attempted and few completed.
Reign, from 2013, is the career-defining job: Mary, Queen of Scots as a young woman surrounded by adults who are all managing her. It is a CW costume drama with the historical accuracy of a fashion shoot, and Kane plays the lead completely straight, which is exactly what holds it together. Her particular skill is showing a young woman calculating in real time, doing sums behind a polite face, and it got used again in her Teen Wolf and Once Upon a Time roles, which are not listed on this page.
Film has mostly meant horror on small budgets. The Purge (2013) is the exception with real distribution, and after that it is Blood Punch, The Devil's Hand, Uncanny Annie, Donner Pass and the science fiction misfire Cosmic Sin. Several of these are worse than she is.
Television has been kinder. Rebecca Bowen in SEAL Team, Mala across Dragons: Race to the Edge for the voice work, and now Dr. Jules Millin on Grey's Anatomy, which is the sort of long-running job that outlasts most careers on this list.
Movies (10)
TV (4)
Where to start with Adelaide Kane
Watch Reign before anything else. It is a silly show taken seriously by its lead, and that tension is the whole appeal: Kane plays a queen young enough to be frightened and clever enough to hide it, in a series where everyone else is chasing melodrama.
Her current work is Grey's Anatomy, where Jules Millin is a good fit for what she does best, a junior with more confidence than standing. Dip in at her first season rather than starting a twenty-year show from the beginning.
For film, The Purge is the only one with a proper budget and she is solid in it. Blood Punch is the interesting low-budget pick, a loopy low-budget thriller that gives her far more to play than the horror titles around it. SEAL Team is the sturdy network work, and Dragons: Race to the Edge is the voice credit worth knowing about. Cosmic Sin can be skipped without loss.