Thursday July 8, 1999 

Santa star wants elf of her
own

Must Be Santa cast wind up Deanna
Milligan's biological clock

By CLAIRE BICKLEY -- Toronto Sun

The sound echoing in Deanna Milligan's head
wasn't 'Ho ho ho' on the set of her CBC Christmas
movie. It was 'Tick, tick, tick.' 

Surrounded daily by Must Be Santa's pint-sized
supporting cast, the 27-year-old actress found it
setting off her biological clock. 

"I don't know if you should write that. My agent
will freak out," Milligan said, laughing during a
break in production of the movie, which will air in
December. 

In Santa, the delicate blonde plays Natalie, the
angel who is the North Pole's assistant
administrator who also supervises its resident kids. 

"A lot of my storyline is being this woman
surrounded by children and really wanting to have a
child herself but it's impossible," explained the
sweet, soft-spoken Milligan, who is married to
fellow Vancouver-based actor Jason Gaffney. 

"My urge to have a baby, if I've ever had one, has
started now. It's impossible not to think about it
when I have kids around me all the time." 

Milligan acted for Santa director Brad Turner
before, way back when on the CBC series Danger
Bay. 

A professional since age 13, she more recently
played the character Jennifer for four seasons of the
high school drama Northwood and has a resume
made plump by Vancouver-produced U.S.
telefilms and series, from 21 Jump Street to
Highlander to Sliders. 

After the 1996 X-Files episode Irresistible, in
which she played a prostitute who died rather than
sacrifice her hairdo to a shampoo fetishist, Chris
Carter hired her for two episodes of his other
series, Millennium. Again, her characters met gory
ends. 

"One day when I went in for my wardrobe fitting,
Chris said, 'I'm so sorry that we keep killing you
off. We don't mean anything bad by it.' I said,
'Yeah, well, you know you should talk to my
mother about it.' My mother can't even watch
anything where I get hurt in any way." 

Milligan wasn't in her favourite X-Files, the comic
Jose Chung's From Outer Space, in which her
husband played a teenager abducted by aliens who
were then abducted by other aliens. 

A major disappointment came this winter when
Global's legal drama Justice, in which she
co-starred as an ambitious articling student, didn't
get the government funding it needed to become a
weekly series. It's on hold until at least next year. 

"I would really love to do it," she said. 

"I think because of this year I'm kind of afraid to
say, 'Yeah, I'll be there and I'll do it,' because
anything can happen. I have no idea what's
happening next." 

Last year, when she went to L.A. for pilot season
auditions, she found her Canadian experience didn't
open a lot of doors. 

"I even had someone accuse me of making up
credits at one point. She said,'You've worked so
much and we've never met you before?' I said,
'Well, I live in Canada and I shot all of these things
there,'" Milligan said, still a little indignant. 

"I worked really hard to get those credits. I mean,
things haven't come really easy for me." 

Despite what her dear Dad may think is the usual
procedure. 

"My father always says, 'You know, most people,
they do one movie and they're gone, they're off.
Why aren't you?' I'm like, 'It just doesn't work that
way, Dad. It's the right job, it's the right project,
lots of factors have to work to make that
instantaneous thing.' And I'm not so sure I even
want that. I'm really happy with where I'm at right
now." 

So her father's also in showbiz, then? 

"No," she said, laughing. "Of course not."