Vinessa Elizabeth Shaw (born July 19, 1976) is an American film actress and model. She has starred in numerous motion pictures since the early 1990s, and her breakout role was in Disney's 1993 Halloween comedy-fantasy hit film Hocus Pocus. Shaw also appeared in Ladybugs (1992), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), and the 2006 remake of Wes Craven's horror film The Hills Have Eyes. She was a supporting cast member in the Showtime drama Ray Donovan, and stars as Dr. Jane Mathis in the 2017 horror thriller Clinical.
Vinessa Elizabeth Shaw was born on July 19, 1976, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Larry Shaw and actress Susan Damante. Her family's original surname was "Schwartz", and her ancestry includes Russian Jewish (from her paternal grandfather), Italian (from her maternal grandfather), German, Irish, English, Mexican, and Swedish. Her name, Vinessa, spelled with an "i" rather than the common "a", was a variation of her grandfather's name, Vincent. Shaw made her first formal performance in a UCLA acting camp short at age 10, and subsequently toured with children's folk singer Peter Alsop at age 11. She also signed on with the Elite Models agency in 1989 at the age of 13 before beginning her acting career, and did a few modeling jobs and commercial work throughout her earlier career.