Marg Helgenberger

Marg Helgenberger (born November 16, 1958) is an American Emmy and Golden Globe nominated film and television actress. Marg Helgenberger is known for her role as Catherine Willows in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and her role as KC Koloski in China Beach, for which she won an Emmy.

Marg (pronounced with a hard "G," unlike the name Marge) Helgenberger was born in Fremont, Nebraska, the daughter of Kay, a nurse, and Hugh Helgenberger, a meat inspector. She is of Irish and German descent and had a Catholic upbringing. Marg has one older sister named Ann and a younger brother named Curt. One of her first jobs, as a teenager, was spending her summers and her Christmas breaks working as a "boner" at the meat packing plant where her father was employed.

Marge Helgenberger played the French horn in her high school (North Bend Central High School) marching band. Until she went to college, Helgenberger wanted to be a nurse like her mother. Marg attended Kearney State College (now the University of Nebraska at Kearney) in Kearney, Neb., then attend Northwestern Alumnus School of Speech in Evanston, Illinois (now the School of Communications) and earned a B.S degree in Speech and Drama.

Marg Helgenberger scored another big break when she snagged the co-starring role of Catherine Willows, a former show girl employed as a blood spatter analyst on the popular Emmy Award-winning CBS drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Her performance as the female lead has earned her two Emmy Award 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 (Las Vegas) to see how things were really done. She even viewed autopsies that were being performed. Helgenberger has stated that she was angered at the franchising of CSI. She has also stated that she is unlikely to stay past her current contract on CSI which ends in 2008. She says that she often plays hacky sack with the guys during their free time on set. Helgenberger got the chance to act with her husband, Alan Rosenberg, again when he guest starred on CSI, season 5 (Weeping Willows) and season 7 (Leaving Las Vegas).

During her hefty stint on the hit show, Marg Helgenberger supported Julia Roberts in the true story-based, Oscar-winning film Erin Brockovich and portrayed Patsy Ramsey in the CBS miniseries about the mysterious murder of 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant JonBenét Ramsey in Perfect Murder, Perfect Town. She also starred as Dennis Quaid’s wife and Scarlett Johansson’s mother in writer-director Paul Weitz's romantic drama comedy In Good Company (2004) and appeared on Pond's Smooth Perfection Skin Cream 2005 print ad.