Amanda Tapping
Amanda Tapping is an actor, born 1965.
Before the Stargate there were guest spots. Tapping was born in Essex and made her career in Canada, picking up single episodes on shows shooting there through the early nineties, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and the like, plus the odd studio comedy. Then in 1997 she was cast as Captain Samantha Carter, and the next twelve years of her working life were spoken for.
Carter is the reason to take her seriously. The part was written as the smart one, which in nineties genre television usually meant a character who explains the plot and then needs rescuing, and Tapping played her instead as a competent officer who happened to be in the room where the impossible kept happening. The credits themselves tell the story: Captain in the first series, Lieutenant Colonel and then Colonel in the films. She carried the role across Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe plus the two direct-to-video features, Stargate: Continuum and Stargate: The Ark of Truth. Very few actors get to age a genre character in real time across three shows.
Sanctuary was the pivot. She starred as Dr. Helen Magnus and produced it, which is a different job description, and she has moved steadily behind the camera since, with a director credit here on Family for Christmas. On screen she now does the well-cast guest turn, Naomi in Supernatural and Dr. Perrow in Travelers, where a decade of goodwill does half the work before she opens her mouth.
Movies (11)
TV (9)
Where to start with Amanda Tapping
Stargate SG-1 is the front door and there is no way around it. It is a long show, so treat the early stretch as a workplace comedy with aliens and stay for the middle years, when Carter stops being the exposition and starts being the officer. Stargate Atlantis is the lighter spinoff and she arrives partway through it; Stargate Universe is the grim one fans argued about, and her appearances there are brief.
Stargate: Continuum is the better of the two features and the natural chaser to the series.
If you want her outside the franchise, Sanctuary is the honest answer, a show she led and produced, ambitious well past its budget in a way that is either charming or fatal depending on your tolerance for green screen. Supernatural and Travelers are guest work, both smartly cast.