Michael Shanks

Michael Garrett Shanks (born December 15, 1970) is a Canadian actor, writer and director best known for his role as Dr. Daniel Jackson in the long-running Canadian-American military science fiction television series Stargate SG-1. More recently, Shanks has been playing Dr. Charles Harris on the Canadian medical drama, Saving Hope.

Early life

Shanks was born in Vancouver, and grew up in Kamloops, British Columbia. He attended the University of British Columbia and was in the BFA Acting Program from 1990 to 1994 and later appeared in several stage productions, serving a two-year apprenticeship with the prestigious Stratford Festival in Ontario. He made guest appearances on TV series like Highlander and University Hospital, appeared in the TV movie A Family Divided and had a small role in The Call of the Wild, before winning the role of Daniel Jackson on Stargate SG-1.

Career

Stargate franchise

Shanks played archaeologist Dr. Daniel Jackson throughout the first five seasons of Stargate SG-1 before leaving the show at the end of Stargate SG-1's fifth season, citing creative differences concerning the under-use of his character and the direction of the show as a whole. He made several guest appearances throughout the sixth season playing his own character, as well as voicing the Asgard character Thor. Shanks returned for the seventh and subsequent seasons, winning the Leo Award for Best Lead Performance By A Male in a Dramatic Series in 2004 for the seventh season episode "Lifeboat". During the series' tenth and final season, he signed up for 16 of the 20 episodes, taking some time off in March 2006 for the birth of his third child (second with wife and occasional co-star Lexa Doig).

Michael Shanks (archaeologist)

Michael Shanks (born 1959, Newcastle upon Tyne) is a British archaeologist who has specialized in Classical archaeology and archaeological theory. He received his BA and PhD from Cambridge University, and was a lecturer at the University of Wales, Lampeter before moving to the U.S. in 1999 to take up a Chair in Classics at Stanford University.

Shanks was a key figure in the development of post-processualism and interpretive archaeology during the 1980s, especially through his collaboration with Christopher Tilley which led to the publication of two books: Re-Constructing Archaeology and Social Theory and Archaeology (both 1987). His first single-authored book, Experiencing the Past was published in 1992.

In the 1990s, two further monographs - Classical Archaeology of Greece: Experiences of the Discipline (1996) and Art and the Early Greek City State (1999) applied aspects of post-processual thinking to Classical archaeology. He co-authored 'Theatre/Archaeology' (2001) with performance researcher Mike Pearson. Shanks has also authored and co-authored a range of journal articles, including an influential paper on 'the craft of archaeology' in 1996, published in American Antiquity (with Randall H. McGuire).