Sara Canning plays Jenna Somers, the loving aunt trying to care for her teenage niece and nephew after the death of their parents, in The Vampire Diaries.

Canning's love of performing began at a very young age; she was a competitive figure-skater for much of her childhood. Later, she graduated from the Vancouver Film School's prestigious acting program.

Canning made her professional acting debut in the stage production of 1984 at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She soon began working steadily in television, with guest roles in series such as Smallville and Kyle XY. Feature-film roles swiftly followed, in projects such as Paparazzi Princess: The Paris Hilton Story, Slap Shot 3 and Come Dance at My Wedding.

Her breakthrough role came with the cable film Taken in Broad Daylight. In the film, based on a true story, she starred as Anne Sluti, a teen whose bravery and intelligence led the police to locate her captor after she was abducted from a shopping mall by a deranged killer, played by James Van Der Beek.

Canning's classical training and dialect work came in handy for her role in the independent feature Black Field, in which she played a 19th-century Scottish émigré making a life in the untamed Canadian wilderness.

Canning was born in Newfoundland, and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, where The Vampire Diaries is filming.

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