Stephen Shellen grew up in Victoria, British Columbia, where he was a star hockey player in his high school days before pursuing a career as a lumberjack. However, after being discovered by a talent scout in Vancouver, he decided to try his hand at acting, inspired in part by a less-than-appreciative audience during his first stage performance in junior high.
He then moved to Los Angeles, where he studied with Peggy Feury and soon became a familiar face in feature films, including Casual Sex? (1988) alongside Lea Thompson and Victoria Jackson, the festival favourite The Stepfather (1987) with Terry O'Quinn and Shelley Hack, the star-studded miniseries Hollywood Wives (1985) featuring Anthony Hopkins, Candice Bergen, and Robert Stack, and the TV movie and basis of the series Murder One (1995).
Returning to Canada in the early 1990s, Stephen had a lead role on the USA Networks series Counterstrike (1990),alongside Simon MacCorkindale and Christopher Plummer, in which he played Luke Brenner, part of a team of three operatives who fought terrorism around the globe.
Back in the U.S., Stephen starred in April One (1994),a film about a hostage crisis for which he won critical raves. He also made an appearance as the cocky actor brother of Craig Sheffer's love interest in the Academy-Award-winning A River Runs Through It (1992),with his scenes with Susan Trawley being referred to by Newsweek as the funniest sequence in the movie.
His career continued to blend big-budget, box office winners like The Bodyguard (1992) with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, and small but critically acclaimed independent films like Rude (1995),which was named the Best Canadian Feature Film at the 1995 Toronto International Film Festival, and receiving eight Genie nominations.
Stephen can also be seen in guest appearances on popular TV shows like Law & Order (1990) and Due South (1994). In 1997, he was invited to Toronto to shoot what he thought would be a one-time appearance on La Femme Nikita, playing a dedicated police detective who stumbles into more than he bargained for in pursuit of a serial killer. However, he was a hit with the show's fans, and so LFN made the decision to bring him back in a recurring role for the series' fifth and final season. The episodes began airing in the U.S. in January 2001.
Stephen has also been seen in the hit Nicolas Cage/Angelina Jolie film Gone in 60 Seconds (2000).
