Kate Mulgrew

Early life

Mulgrew was born in 1955 in Dubuque, Iowa, into an Irish Catholic family, to Thomas James "T.J." Mulgrew II, a contractor, and Joan Virginia Mulgrew (née Kiernan), an artist and painter. She attended Wahlert High School in Dubuque.

Aged 17, she was accepted at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting in conjunction with New York University in New York City. Mulgrew left NYU after one year. During this time, to earn money while in New York, Mulgrew was employed as a waitress.

Earlier career (1975–1995)

Her early career included portraying Mary Ryan for two years on the ABC soap Ryan's Hope (1975). She became a fan favorite and is still associated with the show long after its cancellation. Mulgrew remains friends with former co-star Ilene Kristen and presented a special Soap Opera Digest Award to Ryan's Hope creator Claire Labine in 1995. While in Ryan's Hope she also played the role of Emily Webb in the American Shakespeare Theatre production of Our Town in Stratford, Connecticut. In 1979-80, she played Kate Columbo in Mrs. Columbo, a spin-off of the popular detective series, created specifically for her, which lasted 13 episodes.

In 1981, Mulgrew costarred with Richard Burton and Nicholas Clay in the Arthurian love triangle Lovespell as Irish princess Isolt who casts a spell on Mark, King of Cornwall, and his surrogate son, Tristan.

In 1985 she appeared in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins in the role of Major Fleming.

In 1986, she appeared in a run of Cheers episodes as Janet Eldridge.

In 1987, she appeared in Throw Momma from the Train as Margaret, Billy Crystal's character's wife.

In 1992, Kate appeared on Murphy Brown as Hillary Wheaton, a Toronto-based anchorwoman brought in to replace Murphy Brown during her maternity leave, but who turned out to have the same problem with alcoholism as Brown had previously dealt with at the beginning of the series. Also in 1992, she played a guest starring role as a soap opera star who kills her husband and tries to cover it up, on Murder, She Wrote, episode #170, titled: "Ever After".

Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001)

In 1995, Mulgrew's divorce from her husband became final. She was on the verge of selling her house and moving into a less-expensive apartment in Westwood when she received a call to take the part of Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager.

Mulgrew auditioned for the role of the captain (originally named "Elizabeth Janeway"), when producers announced casting for Star Trek: Voyager. She initially submitted a videotaped audition, which she made in New York City in August 1994. However, she was unhappy with this audition and auditioned in person a few weeks later. That day, film actress Geneviève Bujold was selected to play Janeway (suggesting "Nicole" as the character's new first name), but left the role after only two days of filming, realizing that the amount of work required for an episodic television show was too demanding for her. Mulgrew was then offered the role, which she accepted, later suggesting "Kathryn" as the character's final first name.

Mulgrew made history in the Star Trek franchise when she became the first female captain as a series regular in a leading role. Voyager was the first show broadcast on the new UPN channel, the only series renewed after the channel's first programming season, and its only show to run for seven seasons, making it UPN's longest running. Mulgrew won the Saturn Award for "Best TV Actress" in 1998 for her performances as Janeway.

Mulgrew also voiced the character of Janeway for various Star Trek video games: Star Trek: Captain's Chair, a virtual-reality tour of various Starfleet vessels for home computers; the Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force series, and Star Trek: Legacy.

About her years on Voyager, Mulgrew said:

I'm proud of it. It was difficult; it was hard work. I'm proud of the work because I think I made some little difference in women in science. I grew to really love Star Trek: Voyager, and out of a cast of nine, I've made three great friends, I managed to raise two children. I think, "It's good. I used myself well."

Speaking about the best and worst part about playing a Star Trek captain, she said:

The best thing was simply the privilege and the challenge of being able to take a shot at the first female captain, transcending stereotypes that I was very familiar with. I was able to do that in front of millions of viewers. That was a remarkable experience—and it continues to resonate. The downside of that is also that it continues to resonate, and threatens to eclipse all else in one's long career if one does not up the ante and stay at it, in a way that may not ordinarily be necessary. I have to work at changing and constantly reinventing myself in a way that probably would not have happened had Star Trek not come along. I knew that going in, and I think that all of the perks attached to this journey have been really inexpressively great. So the negatives are small.

During Voyager, Mulgrew also played the role of Titania in the animated series Gargoyles (along with fellow Star Trek actors Marina Sirtis and Jonathan Frakes) and Victoria Riddler in Riddler's Moon, a made-for-TV movie.

After Voyager and her subsequent Star Trek appearances finished, Mulgrew has continued to appear at various Star Trek conventions and events around the world.

After Voyager (2001–2012)

After Voyager came to the end of the full seven seasons, Mulgrew returned to theater, and in 2003 starred in a one-woman play called Tea at Five, a monologue reminiscence based on Katharine Hepburn's memoir Me: Stories of My Life. Tea at Five was a critical success and Mulgrew received two awards, one from Carbonell (best actress) and the other from Broadway.com (Audience Award for Favorite Solo Performance). Mulgrew also kept active in doing voice-over work for video games, most notably in 2009 voicing the mysterious Flemeth in the Dragon Age video game series, a role she described as "delicious".

Mulgrew returned to television in 2006, guest starring in an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Mulgrew also performed in The Exonerated at the Riverside Studios in London, England.

In the spring of 2007, she appeared in the NBC television series The Black Donnellys as Helen Donnelly which lasted for one season. She also performed the lead role in an off-Broadway production called Our Leading Lady written by Charles Busch in which she earned a nomination from the Drama League for her performance. Also in that year, Mulgrew played Clytemnestra in New York for Charles L. Mee's Iphigenia 2.0. She won the Obie Award for outstanding performance.

In June 2008, Mulgrew appeared in Equus on Broadway, playing Hesther Saloman, a public official who is empathetic toward the play's central character. The play opened on September 5, 2008 for a strictly limited 22-week engagement through February 8, 2009. Also in 2008, Mulgrew filmed the 30-minute courtroom drama The Response which is based on actual transcripts of the Guantanamo Bay tribunals. It was researched and fully vetted in conjunction with the University of Maryland School of Law and was shot in three days. Mulgrew portrays Colonel Sims and she, the other cast members and crew agreed to defer their salaries to cover the production costs. The film has been screened at a number of sites and is available on DVD.

In 2009, Mulgrew returned to television in the NBC medical series Mercy playing the recurring role of Jeannie Flanagan (the mother of the show's lead, Veronica). Released in 2010, the film The Best and Brightest, a comedy based in the world of New York City's elite private kindergartens, featured Mulgrew as The Player's wife.

Also in 2010, she starred as Cleopatra in William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra at Hartford Stage.

In 2011, Mulgrew appeared in the feature-length documentary The Captains. The film, written and directed by William Shatner, follows Shatner as he interviews each of the other actors who played a Starfleet captain within the Star Trek franchise. During that same year, on another science-fiction series, she began a recurring guest-starring role on the third season of the series "Warehouse 13," as the mother of one of the main characters.

As of July 2011, Mulgrew has appeared as a main cast member on Adult Swim's NTSF:SD:SUV:: as Kove, the leader of the titular terrorism-fighting unit and ex-wife of series lead Paul Scheer's character.

Orange Is The New Black (2013–present)

Since 2013, Mulgrew stars as Galina "Red" Reznikov in the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black, the role for which she was nominated for her first Primetime Emmy Award in 2014. The popular character was re-signed for seasons two, three, four and five. On working in the series she was reunited with her Mercy co-star Taylor Schilling.

In 2014, Mulgrew narrated a documentary film, The Principle, that aims to promote the discredited idea of the geocentric model. Mulgrew said that she was misinformed as to the purpose of the documentary, going on to say "I am not a geocentrist, nor am I in any way a proponent of geocentrism... I do not subscribe to anything Robert Sungenis has written regarding science and history and, had I known of his involvement, would most certainly have avoided this documentary."

Personal life

At age 18, Mulgrew left her family in Dubuque to study acting in New York. By 1977, she found herself pregnant while acting in the lead role of Mary Ryan on Ryan's Hope. "I was single, alone and flooded with terror. But I knew I would have that baby," Mulgrew said. She placed the baby for adoption three days after giving birth.

Mulgrew married Robert H. Egan in 1982. They have two children. The couple separated in 1993. The divorce became final in 1995.

Over the years, Mulgrew searched for the daughter she placed for adoption, including hiring a private investigator. "The first man who wanted to explore this with me," said Mulgrew, "was Tim Hagan, who later became my husband." She married Tim Hagan, a former Ohio gubernatorial candidate and a former commissioner of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in April 1999. In 1998, Mulgrew received a call from the daughter she had placed for adoption. Her name was Danielle and she had started searching for Mulgrew the year before. In her 2015 memoir Born with Teeth, referring to her being born with a full set of neonatal teeth, Mulgrew tells of being an unmarried mother who gave up her daughter for adoption during the start of her career, their reunion in 2001, and "the costs and rewards of a passionate life". Mulgrew is an opponent of abortion and capital punishment. She received an award from Feminists for Life, a pro-life feminist group. She is quoted as saying "Execution as punishment is barbaric and unnecessary," "Life is sacred to me on all levels," and "Abortion does not compute with my philosophy."

In an interview on April 15, 2015, Mulgrew stated she and Hagan were divorced, something she regrets.

Mulgrew is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Alzheimer's Association. Mulgrew's mother, Joan Mulgrew, died on July 27, 2006, after a long battle with the disease.

Mulgrew is Catholic.

Memoir

Mulgrew, Kate (2015-04-14). Born with Teeth: A Memoir. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0316334310.