Jeri Ryan

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Jryan10.jpg Jeri Lynn Ryan (born February 22, 1968) is an American actress best known for playing the Borg Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager and for her relationship with Jack Ryan.

1 Childhood
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Filmography
5 External links

[edit]

Childhood

Ryan was born as Jeri Lynn Zimmerman in Munich, Germany to American parents. She has one older brother, Mark. Her father was in the United States Army and raised the family on military bases all over the country located in Kansas, Maryland, Georgia, and Texas. Finally, at the age of 11, her family settled down in Paducah, Kentucky. After Ryan graduated high school in 1986 as a National Merit Scholar, she attended Northwestern University, where she was a member of the Alpha Phi fraternity. In 1989, Ryan became Miss Illinois and was a preliminary swimsuit winner at the Miss America Pageant. Jeri finished 3rd Runner Up to Miss America 1990, Debbye Turner. (The 1st Runner Up, Virginia Cha, is now seen regularly on CNN Headline News.) Ryan graduated from Northwestern with a BA in Theatre in 1990. She stands 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) in height.

[edit]

Career

Image:JeriRyan-as-Seven.JPG Ryan was hired as an extra in Planes, Trains & Automobiles during the summer prior to her freshman year at Northwestern, but was cut out of the final version. After college, she pursued acting full time in Los Angeles. She made her acting debut in Who's the Boss? and followed that with guest-starring roles in TV shows like Melrose Place, Matlock, and The Sentinel as well as TV movies like Co-Ed Call Girl. Her big break came when she won a regular role as an extraterrestrial investigator named Juliet Stuart on the TV show Dark Skies. The show was cancelled after one season, but the role drew the attention of the science-fiction community.

In 1997, Ryan was cast to play Seven of Nine, a Borg drone freed from the collective on the science fiction series Star Trek: Voyager. The role drew her instant fame and her wardrobe made her a sex symbol among some science-fiction fans. It also drew criticism from some fans who felt that character was created to add sexuality to the show, and who felt that a disproportionate number of episodes that followed her addition to the cast focused on her character to the exclusion of others. However, her appearance also coincided with higher ratings and more positive critical reviews of Voyager, which were partly attributed to better screenwriting and partly due to her character being both intrinsically interesting and well-acted.

After Voyager ended in 2001, Ryan joined the cast of Boston Public in the role of Ronnie Cooke, a frustrated lawyer who quits to become a high school teacher. The show's producer, David E. Kelley, wrote the role specifically for her. The show was cancelled in 2004.

Ryan has recently appeared in movies such as Down With Love. She had a recurring role on The OC in the fall of 2005.

[edit]

Personal life

In 1990, while dealing blackjack at a charity event, Ryan met investment banker and future political candidate Jack Ryan. The couple married in 1991 and had a son, Alex, in 1994. Throughout their marriage, Ryan and her husband took turns commuting between Los Angeles and Chicago for their careers, but finally divorced in 1999. Ryan had mentioned in an interview for Star Trek that the frequent separation between Chicago and Los Angeles had been difficult for their marriage. The reasons behind their divorce were kept sealed at their mutual request.

Five years later, when Ryan's Senate campaign began, the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have the records released. Both Ryan and her husband agreed to make their divorce records public; but not the custody records, claiming that they could be harmful to their son if released.

On June 22, 2004, the California judge in the case agreed to release the custody files. The decision generated much controversy because it went against both parents' direct request and because it generally reversed the early decision to seal the papers in the best interest of the child. It was revealed that, six years before, she had accused Ryan of attempting to coerce her into sexual acts with him in public, and in adult clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris. This information led Jack Ryan to withdraw his Republican candidacy for an open United States Senate seat in Illinois. Ryan had previously enjoyed a strong showing in the polls, and the Republican party was left without a strong replacement candidate, so the unsealing of the Ryan's divorce records may have made the difference in enabling Barack Obama to win the election.

Ryan has long admitted to a love of food, and while starring in Boston Public, she moonlighted on weekends in the kitchen of the Los Angeles restaurant The House. In February of 2005, she opened - in partnership with her boyfriend, Chef Christophe Emé - the restaurant Ortolan. Located on Third Street in Los Angeles, California, the restaurant serves French food with a modern interpretation. The restaurant has received many accolades, including being named one of the best new restaurants of the year by Esquire magazine and msn.com.

[edit]