Nana Visitor

Nana Visitor, born Nana Tucker on July 26, 1957, in New York City, is an American actress whose career has spanned Broadway, television, and film. She is the daughter of Nenette Charisse, a ballet teacher, and Robert Tucker, a choreographer, and is a niece of actress and dancer Cyd Charisse. At the suggestion of her older brother Paris, she adopted the stage name Nana Visitor in the early 1980s and later had the name legally changed.

Visitor began her professional career on the Broadway stage in the 1970s, appearing in productions including My One and Only, A Musical Jubilee, Chicago, and 42nd Street, with her Broadway work spanning from 1975 to 1996. Her screen debut came in the 1977 horror film The Sentinel, for which she was credited under her birth name, Nana Tucker. Early television work included a co-starring role in the 1976 sitcom Ivan the Terrible and recurring roles on the soap operas Ryan's Hope, The Doctors, and One Life to Live between 1978 and 1982.

Throughout the 1980s, Visitor accumulated a range of guest appearances on television. She appeared in episodes of Hunter, MacGyver, Remington Steele, Knight Rider, and Highway to Heaven. In 1987, she played Ellen Dolan in an unaired television pilot based on Will Eisner's comic creation The Spirit, opposite Sam J. Jones in the title role and Garry Walberg as Commissioner Dolan. Subsequent guest roles included appearances on Night Court, In the Heat of the Night, Matlock, Doogie Howser M.D., and Thirtysomething. In 1990, she co-starred with Sandra Bullock in the short-lived sitcom Working Girl, based on the feature film of the same name.

From 1993 to 1999, Visitor portrayed Major, later Colonel, Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — a former freedom fighter from the planet Bajor who became first officer of the series' eponymous space station. The role became the defining credit of her career. Her real-life pregnancy during production was incorporated into the series storyline beginning with the fourth-season episode "Body Parts" in 1996; she gave birth to a son on September 16, 1996, during production of the episode "The Assignment," while her character remained pregnant until the fifth-season episode "The Begotten." She later returned to the character as a voice actress in the third season of the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks. In 2024, she published Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman's Trek, an examination of the female characters of the Star Trek franchise and the actors who portrayed them.

Following Deep Space Nine, Visitor took on a recurring role as villain Dr. Elizabeth Renfro on the television series Dark Angel and starred as Roxie Hart in both the touring and Broadway companies of the musical Chicago, including performing the role when the production reopened following the September 11, 2001 attacks. She was subsequently cast as Jean Ritter on the ABC Family series Wildfire, which premiered on June 20, 2005. Later television credits include a guest appearance as Emily Kowalski in the fourth-season Battlestar Galactica episode "Faith" in 2008, a role in episodes seven and eight of Torchwood: Miracle Day, and an appearance as Dr. Patty Barker in the fourth-season Castle episode "An Embarrassment of Bitches" in 2012. Her film work during this period included a role as Pamela Voorhees in the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th and a supporting part in the 2011 Hammer Horror film The Resident.

In 2001, astronomer William Kwong Yu Yeung named two minor Solar System bodies after Visitor and her Deep Space Nine co-star Terry Farrell — asteroid 26733 Nanavisitor and asteroid 26734 Terryfarrell. Visitor was married to Nick Miscusi from 1989 to 1994, with whom she has one son. She married her Deep Space Nine co-star Alexander Siddig in June 1997; they have a son together and divorced in April 2001. She became engaged to Matthew Rimmer, formerly company manager for Chicago and from 2017 chief operating officer of The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, in early 2002, and the two married in April 2003.