New Zealand Week: Day 7: Star Profiles: Danielle Cormack

Danielle Cormack

Danielle Cormack got her start in theater in her native New Zealand and first came to real prominence as a teenager with a role in the soap opera Gloss.  She's compiled quite the list of credits since then, with her abundant talents for both comedy and drama making her a natural choice for a rich variety of roles in television, film, and theater.
Born on 26 December, 1970, Danielle had a fairly typical childhood.  She was interested in acting from an early age.  She began appearing in stage productions as a teenager, and in 1987 she won the role of Tania on Gloss.  She would continue in that role until 1989.  Her next big break came in 1992 when she took the role of nurse Alison Raynor on the first season of the soap opera Shortland Street.  Though she only stayed for a year, Danielle was a big part of what started that show down the path to its current popularity.

Danielle as Ephiny in the season 3
musical episode of Xena: Warrior
Princess entitled The Bitter Suite.

Throughout the early 1990s Danielle took on several roles in short films and in theatrical productions.  In 1995 she landed the pivotal role of the Amazon warrior Ephiny in the American produced television series Xena: Warrior Princess.  She would play the role, even crossing over to a few episodes of X:WP's parent show Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, off and on through 2001, and she still appears at the fan conventions.  She also worked with many of the same cast and crew when she played the villainous Raina in several episodes of the sci-fi series Cleopatra 2525, as well as when she played Catherine the Great in a single episode of the historical comedy Jack of All Trades.
 

Danielle with the late Kevin Smith in
Channeling Baby.

In 1999, Danielle played Bunnie, a hippie leading a troubled life in Channeling Baby, a touching drama co-starring fellow X:WP alum Kevin Smith.  Though the film was not popular with the critics or at the box office, it remains a testament to Danielle's ability as an actress, and she has stated that it was one of her favorite filming experiences.  The failure of the film was no great blow to her career, and in 2001 she would star in the dramedy hit The Price of Milk alongside two more former Xena co-stars, Karl Urban and Willa O'Neill.

Danielle with Karl Urban in The Price
of Milk.

The remainder of the early 2000s saw Danielle return to television in several different series, though she also made appearances in such films as Without a Paddle and continued her long string of theatrical roles in such plays as Caligula and the stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.  She once again worked with a lot of the former Xena crew in 2008 and 2009 when she appeared in several episodes of the short-lived syndicated fantasy show Legend of the Seeker.