Nana Visitor
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference.
| This article is written from the Real World point of view |
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| This article is written from the Real World point of view |
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| Nana Visitor | |
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| Birth name: | Nana Tucker |
| Date of birth: | 26 July 1957 |
| Place of birth: | New York City, New York State, USA |
| Characters: | Kira Nerys (Primary Character); see Other Appearances |
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Nana Visitor (born 26 July 1957; age 50) is an American actress best known for her portrayal of Major (and later Colonel) Kira Nerys on the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. She also voiced the character in the games Harbinger and The Fallen.
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[edit] Career
[edit] Early life and roles
Visitor was born as Nana Tucker in New York City, the daughter of a Broadway choreographer and a ballet instructor. She began acting on stage while attending high school in the 1970s, and although she had been accepted into Princeton University, she chose instead to pursue a professional acting career. She continued acting on the New York stage, ultimately landing roles on Broadway. She also landed her first television gig as a regular – credited as Nana Tucker – on the short-lived sitcom Ivan the Terrible, which ran during the 1976-77 season. She also made her film debut in 1977 (still credited as Tucker) with a small role in the horror movie The Sentinel, which starred future DS9 guest actor Chris Sarandon. She then became a regular on the TV soap opera Ryan's Hope during the 1978-79 season, although future Star Trek: Voyager star Kate Mulgrew and DS9 co-star Andrew Robinson, who were also regulars on the series, had left the cast by that time.
[edit] 1980s
It was in the 1980s that Nana Tucker began acquiring major roles on Broadway, including the title role in Gypsy and a double role in My One and Only (co-starring Bruce McGill). It was during this time that she took on a stage name, "Nana Visitor", as "Visitor" is "an old family name on her mother's side." [1] With this new name, she not only continued her stage career but also became a regular on another soap opera, The Doctors, from 1980 through 1981, during which time fellow Star Trek alumni Glenn Corbett and Terry O'Quinn were also regulars on the series. She also had a recurring role on One Life to Live in 1982.
Visitor moved to Los Angeles, California in 1985, having recently starred in a revival of the play 42nd Street in that city. There, she aquired guest spots on such TV shows as Hunter (which featured Bruce Davison as a regular, in an episode with Gregory Itzin as a fellow guest star), MacGyver (two episodes, one in 1985, another – with Clive Revill – in 1987), Matlock (three episodes – one in 1987 with Bert Remsen and Jason Wingreen, another in 1989 with Michael Durrell and James Sloyan, and a third in 1993 with Daniel Roebuck) Remington Steele (in an episode with future DS9 guest star Kenneth Mars), Knight Rider, Highway to Heaven, Night Court (starring John Larroquette), L.A. Law (co-starring Corbin Bernsen, Larry Drake, and one-time DS9 guest star Deborah May), thirtysomething (with David Clennon), and Doogie Howser, M.D. (starring James B. Sikking and Lawrence Pressman). She was also seen in an episode of a series called Ohara with Star Trek: The Next Generation actress Denise Crosby, and had a brief recurring role on the Dynasty spin-off series The Colbys in 1987. Additionally, she appeared in the made-for-TV movies The Spirit (1987, with Daniel Davis, Bumper Robinson, and Garry Walberg), Meet the Munceys (1988, with Dan Gauthier), and A Father's Homecoming (also 1988, with Michael McKean).
[edit] 1990s
Visitor went on to star on the short-lived sitcom Working Girl, which aired for twelve episodes in 1990. Afterwards, Visitor continued making guest appearances on various TV shows – including Murder, She Wrote and Empty Nest – before auditioning for the role of Major Kira Nerys in 1992. According to Visitor, the role piqued her curiosity because it wasn't "'a mother, or a wife, or a prostitute, or a killer. [Kira] is fully realized.'" [2]
Sometime prior to these events, Visitor married fellow dancer Nick Miscusi. The two had a child, Buster, in 1992, but divorced in 1994.
Visitor's role as Kira Nerys was written into the series after Michelle Forbes rejected the offer to star in the series as Ro Laren, her character from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Visitor's makeup artist on the series was Camille Calvet.
Visitor, who is extremely claustrophobic, had great difficulty filming the episode "Second Skin" due to the Cardassian makeup she had to wear. Due to this experience, she could not bring herself to wear the foam rubber head that was required for the holosuite scene in "Meridian" in which Quark's head is programmed onto Kira's body. As a result, a body double had to be used in Visitor's place. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion)
During the course of Deep Space Nine, Visitor became involved with her DS9 co-star Alexander Siddig. The union ultimately produced a son, and Visitor's pregnancy was written into the series. Their son, named Django El Tahir El Siddig, was born on 16 September 1996, during production on the episode "Let He Who Is Without Sin...". Visitor and Siddig married the following year, although they divorced in 2001, two years after DS9 came to an end.
[edit] After DS9
After spending seven years on DS9, Visitor returned to the Broadway stage to play Roxie Hart in Chicago. She also became a recurring performer on James Cameron's cult science fiction series Dark Angel, playing the evil Dr. Elizabeth Renfro, aka "Madame X". She then made appearances on such series as Frasier (starring Kelsey Grammer in the title role, in an episode also featuring Ann Cusack and Harve Presnell), Las Vegas (with Nikki Cox, Sherman Howard and Patrick Kilpatrick), and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
Visitor also has a role in the 2006 comic drama Mini's First Time, her first feature film since 1977's The Sentinel. She followed this with a supporting role in the horror movie Babysitter Wanted.
In 2008, Visitor was seen as a cancer patient in the sixth episode of the last season of Ronald D. Moore's Battlestar Galactica, entitled "Faith". Besides Moore, who wrote and produced for DS9, Visitor will also be reuniting with writers David Weddle and Bradley Thompson, and artist Doug Drexler. According to Thompson, Visitor was the first person Weddle thought of after reading the script. According to Weddle, Moore attempted to cast Visitor in the previous season and jumped at the opportunity to cast her in this episode. "We have always thought she is a tremendous actress with great range," Weddle said. "We thought she could deliver an amazing performance in this particular role. She did not disappoint us." [3]
In the meantime, Visitor stars as Jean Ritter in Michael and Shawn Piller's ABC Family series, Wildfire. The series is currently in its fourth and final season.
Visitor will also be playing Pamela Voorhees, the mother of hockey-masked serial killer Jason Voorhees, in the upcoming remake of the horror film Friday the 13th. Visitor said her appearance in the movie is relatively short and that a mold was made of her head. [4]
[edit] Additional characters
| Star Trek: Deep Space Nine regular cast |
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| Rene Auberjonois • Avery Brooks • Nicole de Boer • Michael Dorn • Terry Farrell • Cirroc Lofton • Colm Meaney • Armin Shimerman • Alexander Siddig • Nana Visitor |
[edit] External links
- Official Website
- Nana Visitor at Wikipedia
- Nana Visitor at Memory Beta, the wiki for licensed Star Trek works
- Nana Visitor at the Internet Movie Database
- Nana Visitor at the Internet Broadway Database
