Sandrine Holt

Sandrine Holt might be most recognizable as White House aide Evelyn Martin on the hit action thriller "24" (Fox 2001-10), but her ambitions were far from buttoned down. Holt dreamt of working with experimental film director Lars von Trier. If she had been given the chance to direct, she wanted to helm a documentary. And while the actor debuted in Bruce Beresford's bleak account of early encounters between Native North Americans and European settlers, "Black Robe," she hungered for a good comedic role. Clearly, there was more to this model-turned-actor than met the eye.

Sandrine Holt was born Sandrine Ho in London, England, the child of a Chinese father and a French mother. Her family moved to Toronto when Holt was five. By the age of 13, she had begun a modeling career, breaking into acting with an appearance on the syndicated horror anthology "Friday the 13th: The Series" (1987-90). Shortly thereafter, Sandrine Ho changed her surname to the more ethnically-ambiguous Sandrine Holt. She made her film debut in "Black Robe" (1991), director Bruce Beresford's well-received historical epic about early encounters between indigenous North American tribes and European settlers in Canada.

In 1994, Holt scored featured roles in another pair of films. "Rapa-Nui" was an esoteric film of disputed historical accuracy about the Birdman cult of Easter Island, co-produced by Kevin Costner. For the second time, Holt depicted an indigenous North American character, this time, a modern-day resident of an economically-depressed reservation on the Canadian plains, in director Bruce McDonald's "Dance Me Outside," based on a book of short stories by W.P. Kinsella (Field of Dreams). In 1999, she once again played a Native North American, this time in the title role of a young adult-oriented biopic, "Pocahontas: The Legend" (1999).

In 1997, Holt landed her first starring TV role as the lead in a Canadian-made syndicated television series based on Hong Kong film legend John Woo's 1996 action drama "Once A Thief." After several more years of working steadily in film and television projects in both Canada and the United States, Holt landed her breakthrough role as Evelyn Martin, assistant to Martha Logan (Jean Smart), the devious and mentally unstable First Lady of the United States on the fifth and sixth seasons of the action hit "24." This was followed by a recurring role as arch Catherine Rothberg on lesbian romantic drama "The L Word" (Showtime 2004-09). During this era, she also appeared regularly in action films such as "Underworld: Awakening" (2012) and two films in the "Resident Evil: franchise, "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" (2004) and "Resident Evil: Retribution" (2012) In 2013, Holt co-starred as grass-roots organizer Gillian Cole on the American adaptation of the BBC miniseries "House of Cards" (Netflix 2013).