Today, Alexandra Breckenridge stars in the medical drama Virgin River on Netflix, but her best movies and TV shows run all over the spectrum of genres. Breckenridge started her work in TV movies as a teenager before slowly getting roles in series and big screen movies, and ultimately transitioning to more mature parts.

Breckenridge is a great character actor because of the way she worked her way up in the industry. Early in her career, she featured as a guest star in a lot of teen television shows, playing all different character types, which helped to increase her versatility as an actor as she started booking more substantial roles. With such a diverse background of parts, Breckenridge has proven where she really excels is in dramatic roles, like that of her Netflix hit Virgin River.

A lot of stars made their way through Dawson’s Creek before they landed their own starring roles in TV shows. NCIS’s Pauley Perrette played a therapist, House’s Jennifer Morrison played a wealthy heiress, and Virgin River’s Alexandra Breckenridge (then credited as Alex) played an ex of one of the main characters.

The series followed the titular Dawson (James Van Der Beek) and his friends as they came of age in a small town in Massachusetts and then followed their dreams after high school. When Breckenridge appeared in the show, it was in the middle of relationship drama for a lot of the characters and Jack’s (Kerr Smith) coming out storyline.

Breckenridge played Jack’s ex and a friend of his sister, who just wanted to have a good time after her boyfriend broke up with her because he was gay. Jack spends the episode worried about coming out to her as a result.

For modern TV stars, it’s a rite of passage to appear in either a Hallmark Channel Original romance or a Lifetime drama. Breckenridge has done both in the 2020s, but her Hallmark movie edges out the Lifetime one as one of her best roles.

Love In Store sees Breckenridge as a host on a home shopping channel. When she and one of her network rivals are up for the same promotion, they end up having to work together instead of just facing off. Of course, because this is a love story, sparks fly.

The movie uses a formula that Hallmark has perfected in other projects, so there is not a big surprise in store for the audience at the end, but that does not make it any less fun.

After appearing on Dawson’s Creek in 2000 (and several other one-off WB series), a decade later, Breckenridge would return to the network after it became the CW to recur in Life UneXpected.

The series follows a teenager (Britt Robertson) who seeks out her birth parents with the goal of becoming emancipated before she actually ages out of the foster care system. She wants to start her life on her own, but because she is a minor, she needs a parental figure to help her do that. Instead, she ends up connecting with her birth parents and coming to understand why they made the decisions they did when they were her age.

Breckenridge appears in the series as the sister to Shiri Appleby’s character. While Appleby plays a put-together radio personality as an adult, it’s made clear she was a little wilder as a kid, and her sister was the more straight-laced of the two.

Dirt was meant to be a starring vehicle for Courteney Cox after the sitcom Friends ended, but the series was cut short in season 2. The series takes her far from the world of cozy New York apartments and the friendship bubble. Here, Cox is the editor of a “glossy tabloid,” and she fixates on making it a success, no matter what, sacrificing most of the other relationships in her life to do so and taking huge, often unethical, risks to break salacious stories.

Breckenridge stars in the show as a reporter looking to rise to the top. Not unlike her editor, she is willing to do whatever it takes for a story, even if it means she has to sleep with sources or party with their drug dealers.

She’s The Man is a great modern teen adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Amanda Bynes stars as a teenage girl who pretends to be her own twin brother to secure a spot on the soccer team after the girls’ team is cut. Her role as her own brother leads to complicated feelings for his roommate and a hilarious comedy of errors.

She often plays girl-next-door types in her supporting roles. for the time in which the movie was filmed. She is also the brother’s girlfriend, further complicating matters as

If Family Guy fans are planning on finding Alexandra Breckenridge among the main cast of animated voices in the show, they will have a tough time.

The animated sitcom follows a family, their talking dog, and their genius baby through their everyday lives with plenty of crass humor and social commentary. Breckenridge went in for a single guest role in 2005 and kept getting asked back to record bits of dialogue for the show. She ended up voicing a lot of celebrity characters for the show, like its version of Sarah Jessica Parker, and working with Seth MacFarlane on other animated projects as well.

The Walking Dead has become the definitive zombie series for television. With its many spinoffs, it has created an immersive universe that expanded far beyond the original graphic novels that inspired the show.

While the bulk of the show followed the same group fo survivors from beginning to end, new characters joined the group every season, and not all of them lived very long during the zombie apocalypse. Breckenridge’s Jessie and her sons were in the Alexandria settlement when the main characters joined, but she did not make it out of the season alive.

A mom who was facing abuse from her husband, she was insecure and scared, but she wanted to protect her sons.

Instead, Jessie’s grief overwhelmed her at the worst possible moment - as she watched Walkers tear apart her son in the middle of a horde. Breckenridge tried to save her character and even pitched her surviving to go “feral” a season later, but sadly, Jessie became another casualty of the Walkers.

Because American Horror Story is an anthology series, many actors have played multiple roles in the show. While prominent actors like Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson are more noticeable in their many roles for the franchise,

She appears in the first season of the show as . Her role there is largely to seduce the man of the house, so she only appears in a handful of episodes, but it certainly provides

She appears in the third season of the show as . Unfortunately, her time in that season is cut short since she has an affair with a man who turns out to be a witch hunter, and he kills her.

Not long after her appearances in American Horror Story, Breckenridge started booking more series regular roles in other projects, so it’s likely she would not have been available to play more roles for other seasons.

This Is Us is one of the best tear-jerkers on television. Though Breckenridge is a great dramatic actor, she is not often part of the biggest teary moments in This Is Us. The series follows the Pearson family in a not-quite-linear narrative as it goes back and forth from the past to the present. Breckenridge plays a character with a big connection to them.

She plays the childhood best friend of their daughter (Chrissy Metz) and the childhood sweetheart of one of their sons (Justin Hartley). as the two make amends for their failed marriage and gain closure for their relationship.

Virgin River sees Alexandra Breckenridge as the lead instead of one of the supporting players as she has been for most of her career. The series, inspired by a series of novels, has been a hit for Netflix. It has some soapy sensibilities, but ultimately, it’s a small-town medical drama.

Mel takes a job in the small town of Virgin River following the death of her husband. It’s a way for her to start over and grieve in a place where no one knows her past. While there, she finds connections to her own family and builds herself a new life and finds love again.

Virgin River is one of the shows best suited to Breckenridge’s skills honed from years of eclectic roles. , who often finds herself in the middle of small-town drama and heartache while she just tries to live her life.

Breckenridge is the perfect actor to lead a series like Virgin River.