Please Rewind Talent Wall

Danielle Harris

Danielle Harris has spent much of her screen career facing situations that would send most characters running, and she brings a convincing mix of vulnerability, resolve and sharp-edged survival instinct to the job. Born in Plainview, New York, in 1977, Harris began modeling and appearing in television commercials before joining the soap opera One Life to Live at seven years old. Her defining early film role came as Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Harris returned for Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, playing Jamie as traumatized and mute through the film’s first half; critics cited her performance as one of the sequel’s strongest elements. Those films established her connection to horror, but her work soon spread across comedy, action and television. She played Melissa Crandell in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Darian Hallenbeck in The Last Boy Scout and Gwenie in Free Willy, while recurring as Molly Tilden on Roseanne. Harris also built a substantial voice career. Beginning in 1998, she voiced Debbie Thornberry across five seasons of The Wild Thornberrys and continued with the character in The Wild Thornberrys Movie and Rugrats Go Wild. It is a different kind of performance from her horror work, but one that shows the range of a career never confined entirely to one corner of the screen. Horror nevertheless remains central to Harris’s filmography. She returned to the Halloween franchise as Annie Brackett in Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake and reprised the role in Halloween II. She later took over the leading role of Marybeth in Hatchet II and continued adding genre projects including Stake Land, See No Evil 2, Havenhurst and Inoperable. Harris moved behind the camera with her feature directorial debut, the horror comedy Among Friends, released in 2013. Her career has since continued across acting, voice work and directing—a long relationship with genre filmmaking built not around a single return, but around repeatedly finding new ways into the dark.