Today we celebrate the birthday of South African actress Alice Krige. She is best known as the unforgettable Borg Queen first seen in Star Trek: First Contact, and she turns 60 today.
Krige was born in Upington, Cape Province, South Africa in 1954. She had planned to become a clinical psychologist, but had a change of heart in college and decided to go into acting instead. Her professional debut was a British TV movie production of A Tale of Two Cities in 1979. Her first theatrical film role was as singer Sybil Gordon in the award-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. She then made her way into genre with a role in the 1981 movie Ghost Story.
Since Ghost Story, Krige has revisited horror films a few times. In 1992 she played a soul-sucking, shape-shifting, part were-cat, part reptile vampire in ?Sleepwalkers, a film penned by horror writer Stephen King (it’s one unintentionally funny movie, so I recommend watching it just for the laughs). Krige said she prepared for the role by playing with cats and watching lizards (as much as you can prepare for a role like that). Recent horror films she’s been in are?Stay Alive (2006) and the film adaptation of the video game Silent Hill (2006). In the latter movie, she was cast as Christabella, the cult leader of Silent Hill.
In 1996, Krige was cast as the Borg Queen, a character never before seen in the Star Trek universe. She brought a personification to the Borg, and was probably one of the best villains of the Star Trek TNG film universe. She would reprise the role on television in Star Trek: Voyager, in the video game Star Trek: Armada II and Star Trek: The Experience, a museum exhibit in Las Vegas.
Besides Star Trek, Krige has taken supporting roles in other genre films such as Reign of Fire (2002), The Sorceror’s Apprentice (2010), Thor: The Dark World (2013). On television, she has appeared in Dinotopia (2002) as Rosemary Waldo, and in Children of Dune (2003) as Jessica Atreides.
Have a happy birthday Alice Krige, and assimilate some cake! Hopefully we’ll get to see you as the Borg Queen again someday!
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Nur is a tinkerer of programmable things, an apprentice in an ancient order of technomages. He enjoys fantasy, sci-fi, comic books, and Lego in his spare time. His favourite authors are Asimov and Tolkien. He also loves Celtic and American folk music. You can follow him on twitter: @nurhussein
