Vinessa Shaw

A fair-haired player who got her start as a teen model, Vinessa Shaw has been a working actress since 1991 but her breakthrough role came in 1993 when she played Allison Watts in Disney's original "Hocus Pocus." A versatile performer, she convincingly portrayed characters that ranged from the angelic to the vampy and had a natural ease in front of the camera that aided her child acting career which has matured into a confident, compelling presence as an adult. A California native, Shaw was immersed in show business at an early age, with her mother and sister both working as actresses. She made her acting debut at age ten in the UCLA graduate film "My Day at Camp," and the following year, when next door neighbor and folk singer Peter Alsop needed a voice to accompany his, he looked no further than Shaw, who recorded and toured with him as part of the Karamazoff Brothers Circus. A career in modeling followed this, and landed Shaw on the covers of such magazines as Seventeen and British Vogue.