Nadine Van Der Velde

Not content to remain just another pretty face in front of the camera, Nadine Van der Velde parlayed her experience as film and television actress into her development as a writer and producer. The Toronto native's acting career began in the early 1980s with small roles in the Phoebe Cates-starring teen comedy "Private School" and the made-for-TV drama "Fatal Vision," based on the true-crime book by journalist Joe McGinniss. Van der Velde went on to co-star in the low budget comedy-horror features "Critters," starring Dee Wallace Stone, and "Munchies" with Harvey Korman before headlining her first movie, the 1988 Canadian crime thriller "Shadow Dancing," opposite legendary British actor Christopher Plummer. But as the 1990s dawned, Van der Velde turned her focus to behind the scenes work, writing a short film called "Once in a Blue Moon" that co-starred a young Viggo Mortensen as an Elvis Presley-like dead rock star.

After several years contributing scripts to both live-action and animated children's series, Van der Velde produced and wrote the animated children's TV movie "Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids," with the title role voiced by Brooke Shields. The movie's success prompted a series (in which the role of Miss Spider was taken over by Kristin Davis), with Van der Velde writing many of the episodes. In 2009, Van der Velde and husband Scott Kraft co-created the children's musical series "The Fresh Beat Band."