Some very sad news: gifted Toronto stage and film actress Tracy Wright died early Tuesday, after battling cancer.

A truly dynamic onstage performer (one of her last great turns was in Daniel MacIvor's A Beautiful View), Wright kept Toronto theatre audiences transfixed for two decades, after co-founding the Augusta Company with Daniel Brooks and longtime partner Don McKellar in 1989.

She made an indelible impression in her film roles as well, forging a career as one of Canada's most versatile, underrated character actors. She could mesmerize in a tiny part - playing her often vulnerable, left-of-centre characters with such subtlety and empathy, you'd remember them long after the credits rolled.

It's impossible to single out a single favourite Wright scene. There are too many. Whether she was playing a sex bomb adulteress in an early Kids in the Hall sketch, crazy cat lady Dizelle on Twitch City, an aging pot-smoking radical in Monkey Warfare or a snooty online-dating museum curator in Me and You and Everyone We Know, she elevated everything she was in. I'd be remiss if I didn't also make special mention of Donna, the faithful gas company employee who cuts loose in Don McKellar's Last Night - a Tracy Wright performance adored by many in the Arts Online office.

She will be truly missed, and we send condolences to her family and friends.