A prolific film, television, and theater actress, Megan Follows became a TV star as Anne Shirley in Canadian television's adaptation of L.M. Montgomery's popular Anne of Green Gables books.
Born in Toronto to two actors, Follows began acting on TV as a toddler. After she appeared in several Canadian features and shows, and made her American movie debut in Stephen King's Silver Bullet (1985), her performance as Montgomery's feisty redheaded orphan in the acclaimed 1985 miniseries Anne of Green Gables and the 1987 sequel Anne of Avonlea won her two Gemini awards and made her an international name. Supposedly putting her career-making turn as Anne behind her, Follows continued to act in plays and movies throughout the 1980s and early '90s, including TV movies Sin of Innocence (1986) with a young Dermot Mulroney, Inherit the Wind (1988), and Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (1990) (as a grown up Becky Thatcher). The versatile actress also played Anne of Green Gables co-star Colleen Dewhurst's daughter in the grim Canadian drama Termini Station (1991), and voiced the role of Clara in the animated feature The Nutcracker Prince (1990). Follows devoted the rest of the 1990s to starting a family, acting in Canadian TV movies and starring in the Canadian feature comedy Reluctant Angel (1997). She began the next decade, though, by reprising her most famous role (as a now fully adult, aspiring writer in New York) in Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story (2000).
