Nancy Hower

Nancy Hower is an American actress, director, screenwriter, and producer who grew up in Wyckoff, New Jersey, one of nine children. She made her first stage appearance as a high school senior before enrolling at the Juilliard School in New York City, where she studied drama. Her Juilliard work included productions of King Lear, Macbeth, The Fifth of July, And A Nightingale Sang, and The Would-Be Gentleman. She also performed in two productions at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

Hower launched her professional acting career in 1993, playing Andrea in The Years at the Manhattan Theatre Club. The following year she appeared on Broadway in the play The Inspector General. Her film debut came in 1994 with a supporting role in the comedy Insomnia. Subsequent film credits include Blackout Effect (1998), the short independent film Tunnel Vision (1998), The Last Man on Planet Earth (1999), in which she played an FBI agent, and Standing on Fishes (1999), though her role was removed from the final cut of that film. She also guest-starred in the television series Suddenly Susan and The Sentinel.

Hower is perhaps best known to television audiences for her recurring role as Ensign Samantha Wildman on Star Trek: Voyager, a part she played across eight episodes spanning the series' seven-season run. Wildman serves as head of Voyager's xenobiology department, and in the Season 2 episode "Deadlock" the character gives birth to a daughter named Naomi Wildman. Her episodes include "Elogium," "Tattoo," "Dreadnought," and "Deadlock" in Season 2; "Basics, Pt. 2" in Season 3; "Mortal Coil" in Season 4; "Once Upon A Time" in Season 5; and "Fury" in Season 6.

Outside of acting, Hower fronted two alternative rock bands, WENCH and STELLA. She sang lead, played rhythm guitar, and wrote all of STELLA's music; the band served as the opening act on Meat Loaf's 2001 UK tour. Also in 2001, she co-wrote the original music for the stage play Momma, wrote and recorded an unreleased rock opera called Girl on Mars, and played the role of Yitzak in a Los Angeles production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Hower has directed and written extensively for both stage and screen. In 2003 she directed the stage play City Limits at the Keck Theater in Los Angeles, and in 2004 she directed The Lights Change at the same venue. That same year she wrote, directed, produced, and edited Memron, an independent mockumentary about the Enron scandal. Building on that project, she joined Memron producers Robert Hickey, John Lehr, and Evie Peck to develop the TBS comedy improv series 10 Items or Less, which premiered on November 27, 2006, and stars John Lehr as a businessman who takes over his family's supermarket after his father's death. Hower also provided vocals for and appeared in the 2007 film Catch and Release.

In 2013 she directed and co-wrote the Hulu original series Quickdraw, which was renewed for a second season in 2014. She later directed Zoey 102, a sequel film to the Nickelodeon series Zoey 101, with Jamie Lynn Spears attached as executive producer and original cast members reprising their roles. Production began in January 2023 in North Carolina, and the film was released on Paramount+ on July 27, 2023.