Stefanie von Pfetten

Stefanie von Pfetten
Marco Messingfeld
Portrays:	Marcia "Showboat" Case
Date of Birth:	November 25,1973
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month!
Age:	52
Nationality:	CAN
Related Media
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IMDb profile

Stefanie Christina Baroness von Pfetten is a Canadian actress of German descent who played Captain Marcia "Showboat" Case in the Re-imagined series.

Background

Born November 25, 1973, in Vancouver, British Columbia, she is the daughter of Baron Hermann Freiherr von Pfetten, a member of German nobility, and his third wife, Heidrun Reel. Her parents are originally from Munich. Upon graduating from high school, she moved to Vienna and then to Munich, where she studied art history and interned at Sotheby's, before returning to Vancouver to pursue acting.

Career

Von Pfetten's introduction to performing came through her high school's production of Grease; after completing her studies in Munich and Vienna, she returned to Vancouver to train formally in theatre. She has described her first break as a guest role playing a "tormented" silent ghost on The Sentinel. She began appearing in guest roles on Canadian-produced genre television, including the science fiction series First Wave and Seven Days, as well as the horror film The Invitation, opposite Lance Henriksen, and the action film Seeds of Destruction. By the summer of 2000, the Vancouver press reported that she had been cast as office intern Lisa Patrick in the CBC drama series These Arms of Mine, and in the Warner Bros. film Valentine. That November, the press also reported she had an upcoming guest-starring role on Dick Clark's television series Beyond Belief. The following year, she was cast in the CBC television film The Wedding Dress alongside fellow West Vancouver actress Lauren Smith, and signed on for the USA Network film Tracked and the Lions Gate Studios production Cabin Pressure. In 2002, she co-starred with Adam Beach in the Ottawa-shot Canadian film Posers, directed by Katie Tallo. She went on to play Lily Vincent (credited on IMDb as "Lilly"), one of two alien shapeshifters, in the horror film Decoys (2004), describing the character as coquettish and kind, but, beneath that, "very strong and straightforward." The film received negative reviews from critics; she said in a separate 2006 interview that the role was not her first work in the science fiction genre.

Von Pfetten played Captain Marcia "Showboat" Case, a Viper pilot assigned to the battlestar Pegasus, in the second-season Re-imagined Series' "The Captain's Hand"episode (2006) and reprised the role in the television film Razor (2007). In her 2006 interview, she said several of the actors on the series were friends of hers and that her scenes were with Jamie Bamber and Katee Sackhoff. She added that she would be interested in returning as a recurring character, noting that her character had not been killed off.

She later appeared as the goddess Demeter in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010).

In October 2011, the Canadian trade publication Playback and The Hollywood Reporter both reported that von Pfetten had been cast opposite David Sutcliffe in White Pine Pictures' CBC police drama pilot Cracked. Cracked premiered on CBC on January 8, 2013. In the series, von Pfetten played forensic psychiatrist Dr. Daniella Ridley, partnered with a Toronto police detective; the show was later picked up for U.S. distribution by ReelzChannel. Von Pfetten said her character did not carry a gun, instead investigating cases involving emotionally disturbed people alongside her police partner, and that being cast in the series left her feeling she was "living my dream." In a 2013 interview with The Canadian Press, von Pfetten said the show's writers took care in how mental illness was portrayed, noting that her character did not treat the people she encountered as inherently dangerous; of public attitudes toward mental illness, she said, "It's more out in the open now than it used to be." Von Pfetten did not return for the show's second season; The Hollywood Reporter quoted executive producer Peter Raymont saying it was "good to change things up, to bring in fresh faces" as the role of unit psychiatrist was recast with Brooke Nevin. The Canadian television trade site TV, eh? separately reported that her character was written out off-screen.

In February 2015, Playback reported that von Pfetten had joined the cast of the thriller Numb, alongside fellow Battlestar Galactica alumnus Jamie Bamber and Aleks Paunovic, as the film began production in British Columbia's Okanagan region. Von Pfetten played Dawn, one half of a financially distressed couple who, on a winter drive through the British Columbia wilderness, discover a set of GPS coordinates rumored to lead to stolen gold; the film screened at the Whistler Film Festival, the Busan International Film Festival, and the Beijing International Film Festival ahead of its 2016 theatrical release.

Her later credits include recurring or guest roles as Katharina Wegener in The Man in the High Castle (2015–2016) and as Marlene Dietrich in The Last Tycoon (2017). She played a bartender named Wendy in Robert Zemeckis's Welcome to Marwen (2018), went on to play Russian physicist Dr. Irina Petrov in a 2022 episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow, and had a recurring role as Madeleine Saint John across seven episodes of When Calls the Heart (2023). In 2024, she guest-starred as Rebecca Smith in an episode of Tracker.

Personal life

Von Pfetten's father, Baron Hermann Freiherr von Pfetten, was born in 1933 to Joseph Freiherr von Pfetten and Maria Elisabeth von Mallinckrodt. Heidrun Reel was his third wife; the couple later divorced. The Pfetten family's Bavarian manor house, Schloss Ramspau, remained in the family until 1971, when ownership passed to Hermann's sister, Godula von Pfetten; CBC's own program guide, as well as IMDb's trivia entry for von Pfetten, state that her father grew up in the castle. She has an older sister, Gabriela Marie-Elisabeth Baroness von Pfetten, and a younger sister, Verena Alexandra Doraya Baroness von Pfetten. In 2000, the Vancouver press described Verena, then a teenager, as planning to study journalism at Columbia University; Verena went on to become a journalist and digital media consultant, writing for outlets including The New York Times and Condé Nast Traveler, and in 2018 co-founded the magazine Gossamer with David Weiner.

Growing up, von Pfetten's European parents and grandmother took her to the ballet, opera, and musicals; among her family's keepsakes is a 16th-century cabinet from a castle in Germany that had served as a Bible holder. Von Pfetten's husband is named Mike, and she is active in dog rescue; as of 2013, her two rescue dogs were named Max and Lucy.

Notes

• In English, von Pfetten's surname translates to "Stefanie of purlins." A purlin is a horizontal beam running the length of a roof and supporting the top rafters of the roof.
• Sources differ on where von Pfetten studied art history: her own 2006 interview states that she studied in Munich after first moving to Vienna, while a 2013 newspaper profile states that she studied at the University of Vienna.

References