Teaching young girls that they can aspire to be crime detectives like Catherine Willows inspired Marg.
“The most touching responses I get come from 10 and 11-year-old girls who come up to me and say ‘I want to become a criminologist because of you.’ The character has hit a chord with them.
“I want to make sure that I do right by the character, because there are a lot of people out there that are expecting a lot more out of me. Catherine’s a single mother with a past that she’s not afraid to admit. But she’s smart, she’s a role model, she’s confident and sexy.”
Marg compared “CSI” to a 1960s-70s television series thriller.
Classic TV Beauties 1980s Countdown
MARG HELGENBERGER as K.C. Koloski in "China Beach"
Years before she became one of TV's highest paid actresses in "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," Marg was the tough, sassy K.C. in the Vietnam War-era drama.
As Karen Charlene, or “K.C. From KC,” the strawberry blonde beauty played a troubled, complex woman who hustled to earn a dollar, whether it was prostituting herself or selling used cars. Marg's character became addicted to heroin and morphine; gave birth to a daughter whom she handed over to a Vietnamese woman; and K.C. suffered scars from the nightmare of being sexually abused by her father.
“I just immersed myself in the character for the audition,” Marg said in a 2006 interview with Renaissance magazine.
“I didn't sleep for 30 hours before the screen test so I would look a bit tired and feel a bit edgy. Then, I came on to a couple of producers.
"They loved it! I probably could have made a lot of extra money that day.”
“China Beach,” centered around an American base hospital during the war, focused on the women nurses more so than the soldiers. The series has been called a combination soap opera, medical show, and war drama. Scenes were sometimes shown in reverse chronology and characters were sometimes shown in the future.
Marg, playing a civilian voluneer in “China Beach,” won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 1990.
Almost 10 years after “China Beach,” Marg landed the role of a lifetime as Catherine Willows in “CSI.” Catherine was a former Vegas stripper who earned her degree in medical science, took a job as a lab tech at the Las Vegas Police Department, and then became a crime detective.
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"I was a fan of 'Mission Impossible' and I always think of this show as being a modern day version of 'Mission Impossible,' just because of all the gizmos and the scientific stuff and the team and crime solving obviously,” Marg told the website www.scifi.uk.com in 2007. “That show was always cutting edge, it had a cool theme song, it was very intriguing and this show kind of has the same feel."
After the huge success of the series, “CSI” spun off “CSI: New York” and “CSI: Miami.” “CSI” was also partly responsible for influencing the creation of other crime series, such as “Law and Order” and “Crossing Jordan.”
“CSI” even spawned a traveling museum exhibit called “CSI: The Experience,” developed by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.
"I knew it was going to be a big hit...but I would have never guessed that we would have had two spin-offs in four years and would have really created a whole new genre of television,” Marg said. “People say to me that imitation's the best form of flattery and at this point it's like, 'No it not, now you're just ripping us off.'"
Since it originally aired in 2000, CSI has become an international phenomen. CBS estimated a worldwide audience of almost 74 million viewers in 2009 In the USA, “CSI” was rated No. 2, No. 1, No. 2, No. 2 and No. 3 during its heyday of 2001-2005. It's been a Top 10 Nielsen program for nine of its 11 seasons.
The 2011-12 season is expected to be Marg's last hurrah on “CSI.” During her time on the show, she's been nominated for two Emmys (Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series) and two Golden Globes, and has won a TV Guide award for Actress in a New Series (2001) and a People's Choice award for Favorite Female Star (2005).
Marg's Catherine was named No. 82 in “Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters and No. 6 on The Star's Top Ten Hottest TV Characters in 2006.
Still a stunning beauty in her 50s, Marg declined Playboy's offer to pose in 2003 when she was 45 years old, and she was listed at No. 16 on VH1's 40 Hottest Women Over 40.
A native of Fremont, Nebraska who was raised in nearby North Bend, Marg grew up working in bean fields and cornfields, making $1.75 an hour picking crops. As a teen-ager Marg worked alongside her father in a meat packing plant.
Marg strived to become a nurse, like her mother, but instead studied theatre and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University.
“I transferred from a small state college in Nebraska to Northwestern so I could major in speech and drama…I had tunnel vision,” she said in the “Renaissance” interview. “It’s all I wanted to do. I had no visions of grandeur of being a star or anything. I just wanted to be on stage. I wanted to travel places and see things and I figured that acting in road
shows would be a good way to do that.”
While still a college student, she worked in local TV in Nebraska as a weather girl; the producer thought her name was too long so she changed it to Margi McCarty.
While performing in Shakespeare's “The Taming of the Shrew” at Northwestern in 1981, Marg was discovered by a scout for the daytime soap “Ryan's Hope.” Two weeks after graduating from college, she moved to New York and started work on the soap, playing the free-spirited Siobhan Ryan Novak.
Marg took a small supporting role in Julia Roberts' film “Erin Brockovich,” which she believed helped land her gig as Catherine in “CSI.”
“That’s why it never pays to sleepwalk through any role you’re doing no matter how small it might seem,” she told Renaissance magazine. “Julia Roberts was THE star of that movie and I’ll guarantee you that very few people not in the business know that I was even in that movie. But, people in the business took note and here I am!”
“I think when you get into this business, you’re taking a risk, knowing that a job can be over at any time. ‘CSI’ is one of the few that’s had an incredibly long life. I never forget how fortunate I am. Maybe I have my own guardian angel. I’d like to think it’s my dad or my grandmother, his mother. It’s nice to know they’re watching out for me.”
