Susannah Hoffman is from Montreal; her father is a town planner, and her mother worked for a branch of the United Nations in the area of civil aviation. As a young woman, she trained as a dancer, performing with Les Grands Ballet Canadians. By age 16, she decided that dancing wasn't the career path she wanted to follow full-time but she loved performing, so she gravitated to theatre, which, she says with a laugh, "is less painful on the feet but more painful on the head". After studying at Dawson College's Dome Theatre School in Montreal and showcasing in Toronto, she moved to Ontario in 1983. Hoffman has put together a list of credits that is nicely balanced across film, television and stage work. Her Shakespearean roles have been significant and international - playing "Rose" in "The Shoemaker's Holiday" and "Jessica" in "The Merchant of Venice" at the Stratford Festival; "Julia" in "Two Gentlemen of Verona" at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego; and "Viola" in "Twelfth Night" for Syracuse Stage. Her numerous episodic-TV credits include roles on The Edison Twins (1982), The Campbells (1986), Katts and Dog (1988) (opposite Jesse Collins, who plays her professional and personal partner in Edison: The Wizard of Light (1998)), My Secret Identity (1988) and Goosebumps (1995). Hoffman was aware of Devine Entertainment's roster of work thanks in part to her friendship with actress Brenda Bazinet, who had starred in the Leonardo installment of The Inventors' Specials.