Helgenberger was born November 16, 1958, in Fremont, Nebraska, to Mary Kay (née Bolte), a nurse, and Hugh Helgenberger, a meat inspector.[2] She has an older sister Ann and a younger brother Curt. They are of Irish and German descent[3] and had a Roman Catholic upbringing.[4] They were raised in North Bend, Nebraska. She graduated from North Bend Central High School, where she played the French horn in its marching band.[5]
Helgenberger began as a nightly weathergirl at KHGI-TV, the ABC affiliate in Kearney, while attending college (her name was changed by the producer to Margi McCarty. McCarty was her grandmother's maiden name). During the summer, she also worked as a deboner at her father's meatpacking plant. After portraying the role of Blanche Dubois in a university production of A Streetcar Named Desire, she developed an interest in acting.[7]
While performing in a summer 1981 NU campus production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, where she played Kate, Helgenberger was spotted by a scout for the TV soap opera Ryan's Hope.[8]
Soon after completing college, Helgenberger landed her first professional role on the long-running ABC Daytime soap opera in March 1982, playing amateur cop Siobhan Ryan Novak DuBujak, a role previously played by Ann Gillespie. After nearly four years, Helgenberger left the show in January 1986 to pursue new opportunities.
During the early to mid-1990s, Helgenberger played the love interest to Woody Harrelson's character in The Cowboy Way (1994), and had a small role as Capt. Alison Sinclair in Michael Bay's action comedy film Bad Boys (1995). She also played Dr. Laura Baker, a molecular biologist, in Roger Donaldson's science-fiction thriller, Species (1995), and reprised the role in a sequel, Species II (1998).
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).
Starting in October 2000, Helgenberger starred in the role of Catherine Willows, a former show girl employed as a blood-spatter analyst, on the hit CBS drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Her performance as the female lead has earned her two Emmy nominations 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 five ("Weeping Willows") and season seven ("Leaving Las Vegas").
In 2006, Helgenberger's hometown of North Bend, Nebraska, renamed the street on which Helgenberger had her childhood home "Helgenberger Avenue". In 2012, speaking to The Daily Northwestern - the Northwestern University's main student newspaper - she recalled that, "It really is pretty special. When I went back for the unveiling of it, which was about five years ago, I was very touched by it. A lot of people turned out, and there was a program up at my high school where the students were doing scenes from shows that I had done."[9]
In April 2008, Helgenberger was chosen as an endorser of the Got Milk? campaign.[11]
In December 2009, Forbes magazine placed Helgenberger third among primetime's top-earning women, with estimated earnings of $9.5 million, after Tyra Banks and Katherine Heigl.[12]
Helgenberger received the 2,458th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on January 23, 2012, for her television work.[13][14]
She lent her voice as Greek goddess Hera to the straight-to-video animated film Wonder Woman.[15]
Helgenberger appeared in only the first 12 episodes of the 12th season of CSI, as she wanted to return to the stage. The producers said they left the door open for Helgenberger if she wanted to return. Helgenberger left the show on January 25, 2012, during a two-part episode ("Ms. Willows Regrets" and "Willows in the Wind"). The last one was the most-watched episode of the season with 14.26 million viewers.[17]
Helgenberger also starred as Lilian Strand in the series Intelligence alongside Josh Holloway and Meghan Ory.[18] Additionally, she briefly returned to CSI as Catherine for the 300th episode.[19] In February 2015, she joined the third season of Under the Dome.[20]
In 2022, Helgenberger became a series regular on CSI: Vegas, joining the show in its second season and reprising her long-running role of Catherine Willows.
Personal life
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 (b. 1990), named after Helgenberger's late father. On December 1, 2008, the couple announced that they were separating, and on March 25, 2009, Helgenberger filed for divorce.[23][24] Their divorce was finalized in February 2010.[25]
As a result of Helgenberger's mother's 27-year battle against breast cancer, Helgenberger and Rosenberg became involved in breast-cancer-related charity and have hosted a benefit Marg and Alan's Celebrity Weekend annually in Omaha, Nebraska since 1999.[26]
In April 2022, Helgenberger married Charlie Haugk, whom she had been in a relationship with since the fall of 2019.[27]
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, also referred to as CSI and CSI: Las Vegas, is an American procedural forensics crime drama television series that originally ran on CBS from October 6, 2000, to September 27, 2015, spanning a total of 15 seasons. It is the first series in the CSI franchise. The series originally starred William Petersen, Marg Helgenberger, Gary Dourdan, George Eads, Jorja Fox and Paul Guilfoyle. Other cast members included Eric Szmanda, Robert David Hall, Louise Lombard, Wallace Langham, Lauren Lee Smith, Ted Danson, Laurence Fishburne, and Elisabeth Shue. The series concluded with a feature-length finale, "Immortality".
Peter Lawrence Boyle was an American actor. He is known for his character actor roles in film and television and received several awards including a Primetime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
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Michael Imperioli is an American actor, novelist, screenwriter and musician. He is best known for the role of Christopher Moltisanti in the HBO crime drama The Sopranos (1999–2007), which earned him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2004.
William Louis Petersen is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Gil Grissom in the CBS drama thriller series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–2015), for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award; he was further nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards as a producer of the show. He reprised his role as Gil Grissom in the sequel CSI: Vegas, which premiered on October 6, 2021.
Edward Leonard O'Neill is an American actor, comedian and former football player. Over his career he has earned four Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
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Jared Francis Harris is a British actor. His roles include Lane Pryce in the drama series Mad Men (2009–2012), for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series; King George VI in the historical drama series The Crown (2016–2017); and Valery Legasov in the miniseries Chernobyl (2019), for which he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
Alan Rosenberg is an American actor who portrayed the character Eli Levinson in both Civil Wars and L.A. Law. From 2005 to 2009, Rosenberg was president of the Screen Actors Guild, the principal motion picture industry on-screen performers' union.
Jonathan Ray Banks is an American actor. His breakthrough came with the role of FBI Special Agent Frank McPike in the television series Wiseguy (1987–1990). For his role, he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Banks gained renewed recognition for his role as hitman and fixer Mike Ehrmantraut in the television series Breaking Bad (2009–2013). He reprised the role as a lead character in the spin-off series Better Call Saul (2015–2022) and its sequel film, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019). For playing Ehrmantraut, he received five nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series.
Catherine Willows is a fictional character, portrayed by Marg Helgenberger, from the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and its sequel, CSI: Vegas. Helgenberger made her franchise debut in the first-season episode "Pilot". Helgenberger received several award nominations for her portrayal of Catherine, including two Primetime Emmy Award nominations and two Golden Globe Award nominations.
Amy Beth Dziewiontkowski, known professionally as Amy Ryan, is an American actress. She began her professional stage career in 1987 and made her Broadway debut in 1993 as a replacement in the original production of Wendy Wasserstein's The Sisters Rosensweig. She was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performances in Uncle Vanya (2000) and A Streetcar Named Desire (2005), and the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for Doubt: A Parable (2024).
Anna Gunn is an American actress. She is known for playing Martha Bullock on the HBO Western series Deadwood (2004–2006) and its sequel film Deadwood: The Movie (2019), and Skyler White on the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad (2008–2013). Her accolades include two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
"Immortality" is the two-hour series finale of the American procedural crime drama television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. It was written by series creator Anthony E. Zuiker and directed by Louis Shaw Milito and originally aired in the United States on CBS on September 27, 2015.
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