Take the BuddyTV Personality Quiz: Which Battlestar Galactica Character Are You? Katee Sackhoff as
Kara Thrace Kathryn Ann “Katee” Sackhoff was born on April 8, 1980 in Portland, Oregon. She was raised in St. Helen’s Oregon by her father, a land developer, and her mother, an ESL instructor. She attended Sunset High School in Beaverton, where she performed in such plays as Bye, Bye Birdie, Fiddler on the Roof and Oliver. She had been a competitive swimmer and ballet dancer up until the time she injured both of her knees, afterwhich she began doing yoga. Although she initially did not “want to sit in a room and have to focus,” she continued on with the practice, and at the age of nineteen, started taking up Bikram, a yoga style performed in a sauna-like environment.
Her first television appearance was in the 1998 movie, Fifteen and Pregnant. She followed her debut with a variety of small screen productions, such as Locust Valley, Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Hefner: Unauthorized, Undressed, The Fearing Mind, The Education of Max Bickford ER. In 2003, she was cast in the role of Kara “Starbuck” Thrace in the Sci-Fi channel’s Battlestar Galactica. The character was originally played by a male actor named Dirk Benedict, and he had not taken the change positively. Of Benedict’s reaction, Sackhoff said, “If you add up the amount of time Dirk Benedict spent playing the character, not the years obviously but the number of episodes, I’m more Starbuck than he is, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
Since the storyline of the re-imagined sci-fi series dictated that there was no concept of Christianity among the characters, Sackhoff has often concealed the cross tattoo on her shoulder. She has two other tattoos, one on her neck and another on her right forearm, with the latter having been visible in many episodes. Following her inclusion on Battlestar Galactica, Sackhoff guest-appeared in other popular series like
Cold Case and Boomtown.
Sackhoff has not been a stranger to the big screen as well. Her film credits include Halloween: Resurrection, Locust Valley, My First Mister, White Noise 2: The Light, The Last Sentinel and Once Upon A Dream.