Catherine Lough Haggquist

Catherine Lough Haggquist
[[File:|200pxpx|Catherine Lough Haggquist]]
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Portrays:	STO Martyr #3
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month!
Nationality:	CAN
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Catherine Lough Haggquist is a Canadian actress who portrayed STO Martyr #3, one of three Soldiers of the One operatives featured in the climactic Atlas Arena bombing sequence of the series finale, Caprica's "Apotheosis", which aired in January 2011 after Syfy cancelled the series the previous October. Raised for part of her childhood in the Canadian Prairies before her family returned to Vancouver, British Columbia, when she was eleven, she has worked as a professional actress for more than three decades, amassing more than 140 film and television credits.

Career

At sixteen, a newspaper route she shared with her brothers led to an introduction that resulted in her first paid acting work, a television commercial, after a family friend with industry connections sponsored modeling classes for her. She began acting while attending Eric Hamber Secondary School in Vancouver, and later trained at Langara College in Vancouver and with private acting studios. Lough Haggquist's first set experience came as a stand-in for Holly Robinson Peete on 21 Jump Street, where she met director Peter DeLuise on her first day on a television set. Fellow actress Brenda Crichlow, a high school classmate, brought Lough Haggquist into her own talent agency early in her career.

Through the 1990s and 2000s, Lough Haggquist took recurring roles on Highlander and Dark Angel, and appeared in The X-Files, The Outer Limits, Smallville, the television movie Doctor Who (as Nurse Wheeler), Stargate SG-1, and Paycheck. She also held lead roles on the Canadian series The Unprofessionals and Rockpoint P.D., a Comedy Network series, and appeared in the feature The Thing Below.

In 2010, Lough Haggquist appeared as STO Martyr #3 in Caprica's "Apotheosis", in a co-starring guest role. She voiced Roberta Rhodes in multiple episodes of the animated series Iron Man: Armored Adventures between 2008 and 2012.

Lough Haggquist is best known for playing Inspector Nora Harris across ten episodes spanning the final three seasons of Continuum (2013–2015), a role woven through several of the series' storylines. She also appeared as the Fairy Godmother on Once Upon a Time in 2011, a role that led to her first fan convention appearance, in London in November 2016. In the 2011 film Knockout (released elsewhere as The Boxer and the Kid), she played Principal Lee, a role that had originally been written for an older Asian man before she was cast in the part.

Beginning in 2015, Lough Haggquist originated the recurring role of Terry Sternholz, a real estate agent, in Hallmark's Aurora Teagarden Mysteries film series; when the franchise brought her back for its 2017 installment, the character had been re-written as having run for office and become mayor of the fictional town of Lawrenceton. By April 2018, she had filmed the eighth and ninth installments of the franchise. Other recurring Hallmark and holiday-film work included Angels in the Snow (2015), Garage Sale Mystery: The Beach Murder (2017), Christmas Pen Pals and Jingle Around the Clock (both 2018), and a later recurring role as Linda Nelson on Chesapeake Shores. She also had upcoming roles in the feature films Endless, alongside Alexandra Shipp and Famke Janssen, and Love & Oatmeal, with Ben Platt.

Lough Haggquist's other genre and dramatic credits include Fringe, Bates Motel, Van Helsing, Zoo, and The Good Doctor, along with recurring guest appearances under multiple character names, including Jules and Detective Glass, on Supernatural between 2012 and 2020.

From 2020 to 2022, Lough Haggquist played General Petra Bellweather, chief intelligence officer of the United States' witch armed forces and mother of cadet Abigail Bellweather, across all three seasons of Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem. In the show's third and final season, the character was promoted to general following the death of her predecessor. Discussing the role, Lough Haggquist said the season required Petra to balance her newfound authority with concern for her family while facing constant tests of her own code of conduct. More recently, she has appeared in episodes of the procedural dramas Fire Country and Tracker.

Stage work

Lough Haggquist's theatre credits include Classic Chic Productions' all-female staging of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross at Vancouver's Beaumont Stage in June 2015, in which she played the detective Baylen under the direction of Rachel Peake. One critic observed that the all-female production cast its women in male dress to portray the play's exclusively male characters.

Later that year, she played Shonda Cox, an administrative officer at a small-town jail, in the Canadian premiere of Jason Wells' The North Plan for Upintheair Theatre, directed by Chelsea Haberlin. One reviewer singled out her performance, alongside Paul Herbert's, as a grounded counterpoint to the play's more frantic characters. The production went on to win three Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, including Outstanding Production, Small Theatre. Her other stage credits include a turn as Condoleezza Rice in David Hare's Stuff Happens at the Firehall Arts Centre in 2008 and The Learned Ladies at Western Gold Theatre.

Personal life

Lough Haggquist is the daughter of a United Church minister and a Jamaican mother. She and her husband, Neil Haggquist, a labour relations negotiator who has served as executive vice-president of the B.C. producers' branch of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, marked their thirteenth wedding anniversary in May 2008, placing their marriage in 1995.

Biz Books

Lough Haggquist has said the bookstore grew out of her own teaching practice: early in her career she began developing courses on the structure of the film industry and on how freelance performers could navigate it, and assembled a collection of reference books for her students that became the store's founding inventory. She opened Biz Books in November 1996 in the 650-square-foot basement of the old Gastown Actors Studio building at 136 East Cordova Street in Vancouver, paying $500 a month in rent, as a storefront specializing in film, television, and theatre resources. She described the goal as creating "a community space" for the city's entertainment industry.

After roughly five years of about 20 per cent annual sales growth, Lough Haggquist relocated the store around 2000 to an expanded, 1,350-square-foot space at 302 West Cordova Street, at Cambie, paying about five times the previous rent. The move coincided with the collapse of Vancouver's "Hollywood North" production boom, which cost the store $100,000 in income; Lough Haggquist responded by expanding into classes and workshops, including a "How To Start..." series covering skills such as media relations and screenwriting, and by arranging for suppliers to donate movie passes, theatre tickets, and other goods to be given away through the store's newsletter. By 2007, the store carried roughly 8,500 titles and was generating close to $400,000 in annual sales, with online sales having begun that November.

The store, run day-to-day for much of this period by manager Bronwen Smith, became a gathering place for the city's film industry; regulars included actors such as Hayden Christensen and Famke Janssen, and director Neil LaBute shopped there while in Vancouver to direct The Wicker Man. A row of cast headshots by the store's cash register once led Lough Haggquist to suggest that staffer Bronwen Smith and store regular Wendy Morrow Donaldson, who resembled each other, "should play mother and daughter"; the suggestion prompted Donaldson to organize a production of Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother with Smith. Rising commercial rents in Gastown contributed to Lough Haggquist's decision to leave the neighbourhood in 2010, after which the business adopted an "online and on location" model; it continues to operate as BizBooks.net.

Industry service and recognition

Lough Haggquist has served multiple terms on the executive board of the Union of British Columbia Performers, including as vice president, and as a national councillor of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. As early as 1996, while serving as a union vice president, she led a $280,000 fundraising drive for the Gastown Studio Theatre Society to purchase its theatre space at 36 Powell Street in Vancouver, aiming to secure the venue for non-profit use. She has credited her mentor, actor John Juliani (father to Alessandro Juliani), and her years on local and national UBCP and ACTRA boards with inspiring her to begin developing seminars and workshops for fellow performers. She has taught acting for about fifteen years and has separately mentored emerging actors one-on-one through Women in Film. In September 2020, she became the new owner and artistic director of White Rock's The Drama Class acting school, succeeding founder Michele Partridge, who retained a teaching role at the school; she had already taught classes and workshops there for years beforehand, and has separately contributed to training programs at On The Mic Training, the Vancouver Institute of Media Arts, Capilano University, and ActorVan Studios.

For her industry contributions, Lough Haggquist received the Women in Film and Television Vancouver Special Jury Award in 2008. The Union of BC Performers and ACTRA named her their International Women's Day Honouree in 2013 and presented her with their Honorary Life Member Award in 2017. In November 2020, she received the union's Lorena Gale Woman of Distinction Award at the ninth annual UBCP/ACTRA Awards, held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic; by that point she had appeared in more than 140 film and television productions in addition to numerous stage credits. Presenting the award, fellow actor Bronwen Smith described Lough Haggquist as a "true leader." Speaking with a local newspaper afterward, Lough Haggquist said she had known the award's namesake, the late actress Lorena Gale, personally and had previously sold Gale's plays through Biz Books. She was also an associate producer of the short film Reel Women Seen, which won the 2018 Jury Choice Award at the Diversity in Cannes Short Film Showcase.

References