Venus Terzo
Venus Terzo is an actor, born 1967.
Detective Angela Kosmo on Da Vinci's Inquest is the live-action role that got Venus Terzo taken seriously, and it brought a Gemini nomination in 2002 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role. She carried the character into the spinoff Da Vinci's City Hall.
The bigger body of work is animation, and it is enormous. She voiced Blackarachnia across Beast Wars: Transformers and its sequel Beast Machines, a rare piece of continuity between a cartoon and its follow-up, and Jean Grey in X-Men: Evolution. Before both there was Princess Lana in Captain N: The Game Master and Breezie in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. She was Azura across three Barbie Fairytopia films, Lani Tam in the Hot Wheels AcceleRacers pictures, Snow White in a 1995 feature, Lucia Von Bardas in Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes and Rainbow Dash in My Little Pony: The Princess Promenade. Outside this catalogue she also voiced the female Ranma Saotome in Ranma and the female Gintoki Sakata in Gintama.
What makes her useful to a casting director is a voice that reads as adult and slightly hard, which is why she keeps getting the mentor, the villainess and the older sister rather than the plucky lead. The live-action credits pull the same way: Cyndi in the 1990 It, Dr. Schwartz on Arrow, Chief Mona Dietrich on the 2015 Minority Report, a hostage negotiator in Skyscraper, plus a steady run of Hallmark-style mysteries and Christmas films. Forty-nine credits, with the voice work accounting for a large share of them.
Movies (21)
- Barbie of Swan Lake (2003)
- Cold Pursuit (2019)
- Skyscraper (2018)
- Barbie: Fairytopia (2005)
- Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia (2006)
- Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (2007)
- Faces in the Crowd (2011)
- The Barbie Diaries (2006)
- 12 Rounds 2: Reloaded (2013)
- The Christmas Secret (2014)
- Deadly Vows (1994)
- Hot Wheels AcceleRacers: Ignition (2005)
- Snow White (1995)
- Spectacular! (2009)
- A Bundle of Trouble: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery (2017)
- Gone (2011)
- To Grandmother's House We Go (1992)
- The Mystery Cruise (2013)
- My Little Pony: The Princess Promenade (2006)
- Hot Wheels AcceleRacers: Breaking Point (2005)
- A Rose for Christmas (2017)
TV (28)
- Arrow (2012)
- Da Vinci's Inquest (1998)
- It (1990)
- X-Men: Evolution (2000)
- Dead Like Me (2003)
- Beast Wars: Transformers (1996)
- My Little Pony (1986)
- Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993)
- Street Legal (1987)
- ReBoot (1994)
- Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes (2006)
- Minority Report (2015)
- Poltergeist: The Legacy (1996)
- Beast Machines: Transformers (1999)
- Madison (1993)
- The Murders (2019)
- Whistler (2006)
- Pocket Dragon Adventures (1998)
- Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths & Legends (1999)
- The Guard (2008)
- The New Adventures of He-Man (1990)
- Breaking News (2002)
- Mysterious Ways (2000)
- Black Sash (2003)
- The Adventures of T-Rex (1992)
- Captain N: The Game Master (1989)
- Da Vinci's City Hall (2005)
- Action Man (2000)
Where to start with Venus Terzo
If you grew up on 1990s syndicated animation, start where you already have a memory. Beast Wars: Transformers is the strongest case for her: Blackarachnia is a tricky character to voice, half menace and half self-interest, and Terzo keeps her legible across two shows, since Beast Machines: Transformers carries her straight over.
X-Men: Evolution is the other one worth your time, a Jean Grey written as a teenager rather than an icon, which suits the slight edge in her delivery. Captain N: The Game Master is the earlier, sillier version of the same instinct.
For the live-action performer, Da Vinci's Inquest is the only real answer. It is the show that earned her the Gemini nomination and the only place in this catalogue where she gets a whole character rather than a scene.
Two footnotes. It is a tiny part in a miniseries plenty of people have already seen, and Barbie: Fairytopia is where a generation of children met her without ever learning her name.
The Transformers and superhero voices
Blackarachnia across two Beast Wars series is the essential voice work and the most interesting character in either, and Jean Grey in X-Men Evolution is the other one a generation grew up on without knowing the name.
The Vancouver animation industry
The nineties Vancouver studios employed a small pool of actors across an enormous number of shows, and she is in most of them. ReBoot is the historically important one, being the first fully computer-animated series.
The on-camera work
The parallel live-action career, mostly Canadian. Da Vinci's Inquest got her a Gemini nomination and is the substantial one, and the rest is the steady guest work that shooting American shows in Canada provides.