Kiwi actress Stefania LaVie Owen made her debut in 2009, in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones.

Other career highlights include The Carrie Diaries, The Beach Bum and Netflix originals Messiah and Sweet Tooth.

Stefania LaVie Owen has returned to our screens for her latest film Paper Spiders, in which she plays Melanie, a teenager struggling with mother's mental illness.

She says she was taken by the script early on, and she loved the depicted relationship between Melanie and her mother.

"I feel like the story tackles mental health in a really beautiful way that's really a love story between a mother and daughter, as opposed to adding to the stigma of mental illness."

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