Marg Helgenberger
Born: November 15 1968
Where: Fremont, Nebraska, USA
The former TV weather girl first attracted attention as the hard-living breast cancer victim in the Oscar-winning Erin Brockovich with Julia Roberts.
Mainly a TV actress in America with award-winning roles in China Beach and CSI, she has only occasionally strayed onto the big screen.
The daughter of a nurse and a meat inspector, the teenage Helgenberger worked briefly in a meatpacking plant cutting bloodclots out of cattle.
While studying at Kearney State College, she transferred to study drama at Northwestern University in Illinois and caught the acting bug when she landed the role of Blanche Dubois in a university production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Helgenberger also worked for a spell as a local TV weather girl (the news producer felt her name was too long and temporarily changed it to Margi McCarty).
A talent scout for American TV series Ryan's Hope discovered Helgenberger when she performed in an a campus production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew as Kate.
After finishing college, she joined the cast and, in 1984, met future husband Alan Rosenberg, a guest actor portraying a pimp.
She made her big screen debut in the forgettable horror yarn After Midnight in 1989 but raised her profile with Steven Spielberg's romantic fantasy Always.
In 1990, she attracted attention and an Emmy award in America as heroin-addicted hooker KC Koloski in the TV war drama China Beach.
Subsequent roles were confined to TV, including the horror movie Tommyknockers and Through The Eyes of a Killer.
In 1995, she returned to the big screen as a push-up bra toting Fed in Michael Bay's action drama Bad Boys and went on to play Dr Laura Baker in the thriller Species.
Roles followed in The Last Time I Committed Suicide, Fire Down Below and Species II as well as a plethora of TV movies.
In 2000, Steven Soderbergh cast her in Erin Brockovich and she landed the Emmy-winning role of Catherine Willows in the TV series CSI - Crime Scene Investigation.
Recent work includes the Paul Weitz comedy In Good Company alongside Dennis Quaid and Scarlett Johansson.
