Marg Helgenberger

Mary Marg Helgenberger (born November 16, 1958) is an American film and television actress known for her roles as Catherine Willows in the CBS drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and as K.C. Koloski in the ABC drama China Beach, which earned her the 1990 Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. --- Marg Helgenberger was born in Fremont, Nebraska, and raised in North Bend, Nebraska. She graduated from North Bend Central High School. She is the daughter of Mary Kay (née Bolte), a nurse, and Hugh Helgenberger, a meat inspector. Helgenberger is of Irish and German descent and had a Roman Catholic upbringing. She has one older sister named Ann and a younger brother named Curt. Helgenberger played the French horn in her high school marching band. Until she went to college, Helgenberger aspired to be a nurse like her mother. Marg attended Kearney State College (now the University of Nebraska at Kearney) in Kearney, Nebraska, then attended Northwestern University's School of Speech in Evanston, Illinois (now the School of Communication) and earned a B.S. degree in speech and drama. --- Helgenberger began as a nightly weather person at KHGI-TV in Kearney, Nebraska, while attending college (her name was changed by the producer to Margi McCarty). During the summer she also worked as a deboner at her father's meat packing plant. After portraying the role of Blanche Dubois in a university production of A Streetcar Named Desire, she developed an interest in acting. While performing in a summer 1981 NU campus productions of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, in which she played Kate, Marg was spotted by a scout for the TV soap opera Ryan's Hope. Soon after completing college, Marg landed her first professional role on the long-running ABC Daytime soap opera, playing amateur cop Siobhan Ryan Novak DuBujak (1982–1986), a role previously played by Sarah Felder and Ann Gillespie. Helgenberger departed Ryan's Hope in January 1986 and was replaced in the role of Siobhan by Carrell Myers and Barbara Blackburn. Helgenberger guest starred in an episode of ABC's mystery/detective series based on Robert B. Parker's Spensernovels, Spenser: For Hire, NBC's legal drama Matlock and ABC's drama thirtysomething. She also played a regular role as Natalie Thayer, opposite Margot Kidder and James Read, on CBS’ six-episode drama comedy series Shell Game (1987). Karen Charlene "K.C." Koloski, a heroin-addicted prostitute on the ABC war drama series China Beach, was Marg’s first prominent role, which she played from 1988 to 1991. She won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1990. In 1989, Helgenberger made her feature film debut in a leading role as an all-night answering service operator in one segment of the Wheat brothers’ horror anthology After Midnight. She followed it up with a role in Steven Spielberg's romantic comedy-drama Always (starring Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, and John Goodman), a modern version of the original 1943 Victor Fleming film A Guy Named Joe. During the early to mid-1990s, Marg played roles in Michael Bortman's adaptation of Robert Boswell's novel, Crooked Hearts (1991; with Peter Berg, Vincent D'Onofrio, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Noah Wyle and Peter Coyote), Gregg Champion's action comedy The Cowboy Way (1994), in which she played Woody Harrelson's love interest, and had a small role as Capt. Alison Sinclair in Michael Bay's action comedy film starring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, Bad Boys (1995). She also played Dr. Laura Baker, a molecular biologist, in Roger Donaldson's sci-fi thriller, Species (1995), and reprised the role in the sequel, Species II (1998). During that time, Helgenberger had roles in the television films Blind Vengeance, Lifetime’s Death Dreams, PBS’ historical documentary Not on the Frontline (as a narrator) and CBS’ In Sickness and in Health. She was also seen opposite Bruno Kirby in I'll Be Waiting, a segment of Showtime's Fallen Angels helmed by Tom Hanks, and as a novelist on the ABC miniseries Stephen King's The Tommy knockers opposite Jimmy Smits. She was also seen in the CBS miniseries When Love Kills: The Seduction of John Hearn and collaborated with director Peter Weller in Showtime's Partners. After playing a recurring role as George Clooney's love interest on NBC's medical drama ER, Marg appeared as David Caruso's sex-starved widow on Showtime’s Elmore Leonard's Gold Coast, helmed by Weller, and starred with Steven Seagal in the 1997 action film Fire Down Below. She also starred as a talk show host on Murder Live and portrayed the furious sibling to Steven Weber's character on Showtime's miniseries about the elusive Gulf War Syndrome, Thanks of a Grateful Nation. She also starred opposite Ann-Margret in Showtime's Happy Face Murders. In 2000, Helgenberger made a guest appearance in the Valentine's Day episode of Frasier, in which Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) finally wears down his dad Martin's resistance and gets the older man to accompany him to the opera. Actually, this invitation is but a smokescreen, so that Frasier can "accidentally" run into his newest dream girl Emily (Helgenberger). Helgenberger co-starred in the role of Catherine Willows, a former show girl employed as a blood spatter analyst on the CBS drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Her performance as the female lead has earned her two Emmy Award and two Golden Globe nominations. In 2005, she and her fellow cast members won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. When CSI first started filming, Helgenberger visited the Clark County Coroner’s Office to learn about her role, even viewing autopsies in progress. Helgenberger got the chance to act with her husband, Alan Rosenberg, when he guest starred on CSI, Season 5 ("Weeping Willows") and Season 7 ("Leaving Las Vegas"). During her stint on the hit show, Helgenberger acted in the feature film Erin Brockovich and portrayed Patsy Ramsey in the CBS miniseries about the mysterious murder of 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant Jon Benét Ramsey in Perfect Murder, Perfect Town. She also starred as Dennis Quaid’s wife and Scarlett Johansson’s mother in writer-director Paul Weitz's romantic drama comedy In Good Company (2004). --- In 1984, Helgenberger met Alan Rosenberg, a guest actor on Ryan's Hope. The two became friends and started dating in 1986. They married in 1989 and have one son, Hugh Howard Rosenberg (born 1990), named after Helgenberger's late father. On December 1, 2008, the couple announced that they were separating, and on March 25, 2009, she filed for divorce. Their divorce was finalized in February 2010. As a result of Helgenberger's mother's 27-year battle against breast cancer, Helgenberger and Rosenberg became involved in the fight against breast cancer. Marg helped her mother fight breast cancer. They have hosted a benefit called Marg and Alan's Celebrity Weekend annually in Omaha since 1999.