Mia Kirshner

Mia Kirshner
Kirshner at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International.
Born	(1975-01-25) January 25, 1975 (age 42) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Actress, activist, writer
Years active	1989–present

Mia Kirshner (born January 25, 1975) (though some sources say 1976) is a Canadian actress, writer and social activist who works in movies and television series. She is known for her role as Jenny Schecter on the cable TV series The L Word (2004–2009), and for her recurring guest role as the terrorist Mandy on the TV series 24 (2001–2005).

Kirshner was born in Toronto, Ontario, the daughter of Etti, a teacher, and Sheldon Kirshner, a journalist who wrote for The Canadian Jewish News. Kirshner is a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors; her father was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany in 1946, and met Kirshner's mother, a Bulgarian Jewish refugee, after they escaped to Israel. Kirshner's paternal grandparents were Jews from Poland. Kirshner had a middle class upbringing and attended Forest Hill Collegiate Institute but later graduated from the Jarvis Collegiate Institute. Kirshner studied Russian literature and 20th-century movie industry at McGill University in Montreal. Her younger sister, Lauren Kirshner, a writer, was involved in the I Live Here project.

Kirshner found a talent agent at the age of 12, and was acting professionally by the age of 15. She made her film debut in 1993 at the age of 18 in Denys Arcand's Love and Human Remains. She convinced her father to sign a "nudity waiver" to play a dominatrix. Kirshner won a Genie nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. The following year, she starred in Atom Egoyan's Exotica. In 1996, she appeared in The Crow: City of Angels. She also played Kitty Scherbatsky in the 1997 version of Anna Kareninna.