Biography

Melanie Virginia Sydney Morse MacQuarrie made a splash from the very beginning of her life, when, upon her birth on June 13, 1945, she made newspaper headlines as one of the largest babies born in the United Kingdom, at 11 pounds, 9 ounces! The daughter of well-known British/Canadian actors Barry Morse and Sydney Sturgess. After the family emigrated from England to Canada in 1951, she began acting in numerous productions on stage and television alongside her Father, Mother, and Brother, Hayward B. Morse. Her film work includes roles in Prom Night (1980) with Jamie Lee Curtis and Murder by Phone (1982) with Richard Chamberlain, and others. On-stage she performed in such diverse venues as Boston, Massachusetts and the Canada Shakespeare Stratford Festival, in productions including "Peter Pan" and "Much Ado About Nothing". Her TV appearances include Noises in the Nursery (1952), "Drought", and the popular Canadian series Street Legal (1987) as 'Judge Dixon' in the episode "Act of Silence". At the age of 19, she was admitted on scholarship to the famed Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London and in the early 1970s she joined the Ryerson University Drama department in Toronto, where she worked for 30 years prior to her retirement in 1991. In 1999, Melanie traveled to the USA to support her Dad for the taping of his TV special Merely Players (2000). Melanie was in the audience for the live taping and her yells of "Bravo" can still be heard during the curtain call in the broadcast itself! She also appeared with her Father in a mid-program commercial urging viewers to support Parkinson's disease treatment and research.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anthony Wynn