Vinessa Shaw

Vinessa Elizabeth Shaw (born July 19, 1976) is an American film actress and model. Shaw has starred in numerous motion pictures since the early 1990s and was a supporting cast member in the Showtime Drama Ray Donovan. Her breakout role was in Disney's 1993 Halloween comedy-fantasy hit film Hocus Pocus. She also was in Ladybugs (1992), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), the 2006 remake of Wes Craven's horror picture The Hills Have Eyes, and 40 Days and 40 Nights, as Josh Hartnett's character's sadistic ex-girlfriend. She stars as Dr. Jane Mathis in the 2017 Netflix original Clinical. 2Early life Vinessa Elizabeth Shaw was born on July 19, 1976, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Larry Shaw and actress Susan Damante-Shaw (née Susan Jean Damante). Her family's original surname was "Schwartz", and her ancestry includes Russian Jewish (from her paternal grandfather), Italian (from her maternal grandfather), German, Irish, English, Mexican, and Swedish. Her name, Vinessa, spelled with an "i" rather than the common "a", was a variation of her grandfather's name, Vincent. Shaw made her first formal performance in a UCLA acting camp short at age 10, and subsequently toured with children's folk singer Peter Alsop at age 1