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When Natasha Henstridge embarked on a career in the entertainment industry, many considered her to be just a pretty face. After nearly thirty years acting in television and film, she has absolutely proved her naysayers wrong.
Her most memorable role was as the beautiful but deadly alien Sil in the movie Species, but what did Henstridge do after she played the most desirable alien on any planet?
Garrett Wang may not be as big of a name in Hollywood today, but his pivotal role in advocating for more Asian Americans in Hollywood is finally showing fruit these days. His role as Ensign Harry Kim in Star Trek: Voyager was another in a prestigious line of Asian actors on the show, including George Takei and Michelle Yeoh. Although he had a major role in the series, he’s seemingly disappeared since.
The 80s was all about the American family sitcom, and one that captured viewers was the award-winning show Silver Spoons. At the heart of the series was the relationship between a child-like father and a mature child, who was played by actor Ricky Schroder. The blond-haired kid used his good looks to keep audiences hooked and coming back season after season. Let’s see what Ricky Schroder did with his career once the silver spoon was taken out of his hand.
Bo Derek was one of the greatest sex symbols of the 80s in Hollywood and could be found in almost anything from drama to comedy as the starring attraction for posters and trailers. A. massive setpiece of the scene just decades ago, where has the actress been since then?
Kristin Kreuk might be one of the most resilient actresses on television today, taking a massive television career and keeping it burning despite a massive box office bomb in her earlier career. Starting on just one of the CW/WB’s many heart-throb teen dramas thanks to a province-wide fax search, Kristin quickly took on the world.
Please raise your hand if you had a massive crush on Jeri Ryan after watching Star Trek: Voyager. Yeah, me too. The Seven of Nine actress was a late addition to the series, but she also increased the ratings for the show and became a fan favorite of not just Voyager, but Star Trek as a whole. Now reprising her role as Seven of Nine twenty years later, what has Jeri Ryan been up to in the time between?
Turns out she’s stayed extremely busy, bouncing between her starring roles in television and film while also raising a family. Jeri Ryan works with the efficiency of a Borg drone to this day, delivering consistent quality year after year.
Born in Munich, Germany, Jeri’s family moved around frequently due to her father’s job with the US Army until she was eleven years old. After her father retired from the military, he moved the family to rural Kentucky, where Jeri and her brother would spend the remainder of their childhoods.
She discovered a love of acting at a young age, eventually going for a theatre degree in college before beginning work as a young actress. Jeri was everywhere in the early 90s, no television channel was safe. From her first guest role on Who’s The Boss to Melrose Place and Matlock, Jeri was making herself known.
In 1996 NBC attempted to make its answer to then-rating magnet The X-Files with Dark Skies. A supernatural and sci-fi drama with a big idea before its time, Dark Skies was canceled early on in the first season, but Jeri Ryan used the eight episodes she had put in work and get noticed.
It paid off too, with Star Trek: Voyager looking to replace Jennifer Lien’s Kes due to the actress’s onset behavior, Jeri, after denying it three times, took the role of Seven of Nine. Debuting in the second half of the season four premiere, the un-assimilated Borg worked her way into the hearts of her crewmates and Trekkies everywhere.
Jeri Ryan took everything she learned in Dark Skies and applied it a hundredfold for Seven of Nine, playing a character recovering from the Borg assimilation and being stripped of her individualism. Seven had a cold badass exterior, which often brought her to disagreements with Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew, another legend) that would lead to a relationship much like Kirk and Spock between the two.
Seven joined the Voyager crew on their long journey home for the remainder of the series, clocking a total of 101 episodes before the finale in 2001.
Worth noting Jeri also starred in Dracula 2000 around the same time, which still stands as a campy b-classic with a lot of surprising names. That was just the beginning of her career though, all things considered. She would go on to have a starring role in the ensemble drama Boston Public during its four-season run, before somehow appearing in the spinoff Boston Legal as a different character. Witness protection, maybe?
Through the rest of the late 2000s and early 2010s, she cycled through a few shows as either guest star or main cast, notably getting three episodes of Law and Order: SVU before jumping to Law and Order Criminal Intent a year later. As a totally different character. Again. you can’t keep doing this, Jeri!
Seriously, this woman is a machine. In the time between 2010-2011, she starred in those episodes of Law & Order, an episode of Two and a Half Men, an eight-episode run of Leverage immediately after she gave birth, landed another main cast role in Body of Proof, AND nailed the character of Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat: Rebirth and Legacy. Most of that was in 2011 alone. Oh, she also starred in two Lifetime original horrors in 2010.
Body of Proof kept her going for a couple of years before ending after three seasons. Jeri once again moved between shows and television movies, adding to her credits with shows like Arrow and Helix (gone too soon), before becoming a series regular on Bosch for the first season.
Jeri Ryan has since reprised the role in Star Trek: Picard, picking up more than twenty years after Seven’s last appearance in-universe. Currently, she’s due to be a regular in the third and final season of Star Trek: Picard and the show Dark Winds for season two.
That’s just her career too. Her personal life has been a whirlwind, from her first marriage to politician Jack Ryan (not that Jack Ryan) which indirectly helped Barack Obama win his Senate race in 2004. The couple had one son, Alex, in 1994 before divorcing in 1999 due to Jack Ryan’s reveal as being kind of a creep.
That said, bad times don’t last forever and she met her current husband Christophe Eme in 2003. A gourmet chef, Eme bonded with Jeri Ryan over their love of cooking, with the couple even opening a French restaurant in 2005 (which has unfortunately closed). The couple would marry in 2007 and welcome their daughter Gisele in 2008.
Still a foodie, Jeri Ryan spends most of her days not acting either being with children or cooking with her husband. She has also been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and also currently sponsors Trek Against ALS, a fund started by Trek cast and crew to support Margot, her stand-in actress on Star Trek: Picard. Needless to say, her support and kindness are a nice light in some dreary times.
Joseph Mazzello probably isn’t a name you would recognize off-hand, but if you were anywhere near popular cinema since 1993 odds are you’ve seen his most popular role. Starring in the Steven Spielberg classic Jurassic Park at just ten years old. While he’s grown, he’s still running around Hollywood and you’ve probably seen him in some very popular projects.
Ask anyone which of Monk’s two assistants was the best, and no doubt they’ll respond with an answer about Natalie played by Traylor Howard. Although the actress was a late addition to the hit show, it made her name after indie comedy success had only gotten her in the door. So where did she channel all that success after the end of Monk?
Kate Jackson burst into Hollywood with roles in cult hits early on before getting a starring role as an original of the Charlie’s Angels crew. The original Angel went on to a massive career, making waves in the eighties before being waylaid by a health issue. With those behind her now, what is she doing in Hollywood these days?
Terry Farrell may have only had six seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to make an impact, but she used those six seasons in the best ways possible, even being called an “Action Barbie” by The Next Generation star LeVar Burton. The actress made quick waves with her tall, lithe figure and badass attitude, so why has she disappeared from screens?
Video game movies have some of the worst track records out there, and Nintendo’s original Plumber has one of the earliest bombs on record. That’s a lot on the line over thirty years later with even more games and additions to the Mario lore popping up in between, with not just Mario but Luigi and even Toad now having their own critically loved games as well. So did Illumination deliver on the new gamble of taking Nintendo’s Italian Stallion into an animated direction?
The American sitcom dominated 80s television, and one that lasted the test of audiences was The Facts of Life. From typical snobby boarding school girls to the women that tried to keep them in line, the show gave us pretty much everything 80s that we love, from big hair to Molly Ringwald.
A spin-off of the series Diff’rent Strokes, the show centered around a small group of girls, with the alpha being Blair Warner. The sassy, wealthy, and could-be shallow Blair was perfectly portrayed by then-teen actor Lisa Whelchel. Barely 15 when the show first aired, Whelchel made her mark on screen, wanted and envied by girls and boys alike. Has Lisa had any more of her brilliant ideas since her time at Eastland Academy? Let’s find out.