Catherine Hicks

Catherine Mary Hicks, born August 6, 1951, in New York City, is an American retired actress whose career spanned Broadway, television, and film over several decades. The daughter of homemaker Jackie and electronics salesman Walter Hicks, she is of Irish and English ancestry. Her family relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona, during her childhood. Hicks earned a degree in English literature from Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1973, and subsequently received a prestigious acting fellowship sponsored by the University Resident Theatre Association to Cornell University, where she was a member of the Ithaca Repertory Theater Company and completed a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Returning to New York in August 1976, Hicks secured her first major television role within two weeks of arriving, joining the cast of the ABC soap opera Ryan's Hope as Dr. Faith Coleridge, a newly-recovered pediatrician, a role she held from 1976 to 1978. She departed the series when she was cast in Bernard Slade's Broadway play Tribute, which opened in 1978. In the production, she played Sally Haines, a young model whom Jack Lemmon's character Scottie sets up with his estranged son, portrayed by Robert Picardo. That same year she also starred as Valerie in the CBS television movie and series pilot Sparrow.

Following the close of Tribute, Hicks moved to California, where she joined the cast of the CBS sitcom The Bad News Bears as Dr. Emily Rappant, a junior high school principal and psychologist, during its 1979–80 run. She appeared in several television movies during this period, including ABC's Love For Rent (1979) and CBS's To Race the Wind (1980). In 1980, she was selected from hundreds of candidates to portray Marilyn Monroe in ABC's production Marilyn: The Untold Story, based on Norman Mailer's best-selling work. Her performance earned her an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie.

In 1981, Hicks starred in CBS's remake of Valley of the Dolls as Anne Wells, an entertainment lawyer. Her feature film debut came in the 1982 thriller Death Valley, in which she played Sally, the mother of Peter Billingsley's character. That same year she appeared in Better Late Than Never as Sable. She then took the lead role of Amanda Tucker in the CBS detective series Tucker's Witch, opposite Tim Matheson, which aired from October 1982 into August 1983. In 1984, she appeared in Sidney Lumet's Garbo Talks alongside Anne Bancroft and Ron Silver, and played Bill Murray's socialite fiancée Isabel in The Razor's Edge.

Hicks appeared in two notable films in 1986. She played Dr. Gillian Taylor in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, a role that earned her a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and she portrayed Carol Heath in Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married. In 1987, she played Dr. Amy Larkin in Like Father Like Son and hosted the 59th Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony in March of that year. In 1988, she played Karen Barclay in the horror film Child's Play, a performance that won her a Saturn Award for Best Actress.

In 1996, Hicks was cast as Annie Camden on The WB's family drama 7th Heaven, the role for which she became most widely recognized. She continued in the part for the entirety of the series' run, which concluded after eleven seasons in 2007. Among her later credits, she starred in Lifetime Network films including Poison Ivy: The Secret Society (2008) and Stranger with My Face (2009), and won the Best Actress in a Supporting Role award at the 2009 International Filmmakers Festival for her work in My Name Is Jerry. In 2015, she was among eight actresses featured in the Showtime documentary That Gal... Who Was in That Thing.