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Marina Sirtis freely admits it: she loves television - and not just because the medium transformed her from a struggling actress to a successful one.
"I've always loved TV," says the woman who played Counselor Deanna Troi on Star Trek: The Next Generation. "I know it's not fashionable for actors to say that, but it's true. Brent Spiner (her Next Generation co-star) and I joke that when we're not on TV, we're watching it."
It's only fitting, then, that the London-born actress' major contribution to television is a far-reaching series that elevated not only the sci-fi genre but TV as a whole. "We really had no idea it was going to take off the way it did," she says. "When we started, the fans were not enthusiastic about having a new Star Trek. It's gratifying how they grew to love us."."
After seven seasons (1987-94) and three follow-up movies, The Next Generation is a sci-fi institution. Sirtis was unknown and broke when cast, but it's hard now to imagine anyone else as Troi, trusted adviser to Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart).
Sirtis, who turns 40 this month, has kept a low profile since the latest Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Insurrection, in 1998. She did a Neil Simon play in Philadelphia for three months in early '99, then guested on Star Trek: Voyager and Earth: Final Conflict last December.."
Now, she wants to try something new--a sitcom, perhaps, or independent films. "They interest me more at the moment than the big studio blockbuster pictures. Besides, I get to do my big blockbusters when I do Star Trek movies." The next one's due in 2001."
Sirtis and her husband of seven years, rock guitarist/restaurateur Michael Lamper, live in Los Angeles. They have no children, but she says she is happy with a menagerie of six cats and a dog
© 2000, Biography Magazine.