Alice Krige

Alice Maud Krige (born 28 June 1954) is a South African actress and producer. Her first feature film role was as the Gilbert and Sullivan singer Sybil Gordon in the 1981 Academy Award-winning film Chariots of Fire. Since then, she has played a variety of roles in a number of genres. Krige first played the role of the Borg Queen in the motion picture Star Trek: First Contact and reprised the role for the final episode of the television series Star Trek: Voyager. A year after the series ended, she reprised the role in "Borg Invasion 4-D" at Star Trek: The Experience. --- Krige was born in Upington, Cape Province, Union (now Republic) of South Africa, the daughter of Pat, a psychologist, and Louis Krige, a physician. The Kriges later moved to Port Elizabeth where Alice grew up in what she describes as a "very happy family", with two brothers, both of whom became physicians. She left for London, England, in 1976, with plans to become a clinical psychologist, but turned to acting after an experience in an acting class at Rhodes University. She then attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. Krige made her professional debut on British television in 1979, and appeared in the television movie A Tale of Two Cities. She went on to play Sybil Gordon in Chariots of Fire and Eva Galli/Alma Mobley in Ghost Story, both in 1981. She earned a Plays and Players Award, as well as a Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Newcomer, after appearing in a 1981 West End theatre production of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man. This early theatrical success allowed her to also work with the Royal Shakespeare Company.[citation needed] Krige played Bathsheba in King David (1985) and Mary Shelley in Haunted Summer (1988). She appeared on stage in plays such as Thomas Otway's Venice Preserv'd. She appeared in what she called "tons of TV" in both the United States and the United Kingdom,[citation needed] including made for television movies from Baja Oklahoma (1988) and Ladykiller (1992), to mini-series such as Ellis Island (1984) and Scarlet and Black (1993). She also performed in several horror films, including Ghost Story, Sleepwalkers, Stay Alive, and Silent Hill. In Star Trek: First Contact, she played the Borg Queen, who attempts to assimilate Earth into the Borg collective. She won Best Supporting Actress at the 1997 Saturn Awards for that role. Krige returned to this character in the Star Trek game Star Trek: Armada II and in the Star Trek: Voyager series finale "Endgame" in 2001. Her science fiction career has also expanded into television, with prominent roles in miniseries adaptations of Dinotopia and Frank Herbert's Children of Dune. --- Krige is married to the writer and director Paul Schoolman.