10th Anniversary

Sirtis quickly overcame her terror and has been an integral part of the magic that is ST:TNG ever since. Looking back over her days as Deanna Troi, the actress sounds satisfied yet a little let down. She is. "I think part of the reason it took so long for me to get over the show ending was that there were so many unanswered questions about Deanna," Sirtis notes. "When we saw her she was usually doing her thing. We never knew that much about her, her culture, home planet or events in her past that made her who she was. The writers never pushed themselves to reveal those things. I'd ask about it and they'd say, 'What do you think?' My answer was, 'I'm an actress, not a writer.' I'd love to have known, for instance, what her program on the Holodeck was. Overall, I was happy with the character, especially towards the end of our run, but we just never saw all the complexity we could have."

Sirtis reports that the personal high point of her life during the ST:TNG years was meeting her husband, Michael Lamper. The couple met during the hiatus between the series' first and second seasons, a period extended by a writers' strike that shut down the entertainment industry for months. And the professional high point? Working with the ST:TNG cast and making life-long friends. Sirtis then ads another high point. "The two premières in England were unbelievable," she says. Then she piles on one more. "Appearing at the Royal Albert Hall for a ST:TNG convention we did around the time of STG's release was really the icing on the cake. I'd gone there years before to see Sting in concert. I remember saying to my friend how amazing it was that these thousands of people were walking - you have to walk to get to the hall, because there's no parking anywhere near it - to see this man perform. Seven years later, thousands of people came to see us, the ST:TNG cast there! That was amazing."

Beyond the world of Star Trek, Sirtis keeps busy. She's completed a film, Gadget Man, in which she plays a villainess. The picture's producers are still seeking a distributor. Then there's Paradise Lost, another film, which Sirtis describes as an environmental murder/mystery. "It's about cutting down the rain forest and disturbing a lost tribe," she says enthusiastically. "We filmed it in Puerto Rico. It also stars William Forsythe and Nigel Havers. I play a doctor/anthropologist trying to finish my dead husband's work. It's a wonderful role. I get to play an American and wear regular clothes. It came out very well. They're about to start looking for a distributor and I don't think that should be a problem. It's really, really good."