Career
After college, she pursued acting full-time in Los Angeles. She made her acting debut in Who's the Boss? and followed that with guest-starring roles in television series like Melrose Place, Matlock and The Sentinel as well as such television movies as Co-Ed Call Girl.
Her big break came when she won a regular role as the extraterrestrial investigator Juliet Stuart on the television series Dark Skies. The series was cancelled after one season, but the role had drawn the attention of the science-fiction community.
In 1997, Ryan was chosen for a role on the science fiction series Star Trek: Voyager as Seven of Nine, a Borg drone who had been "de-assimilated", or freed, from the Borg's collective consciousness. When she joined the cast in Season 4, wearing her now-iconic silver formfitting catsuit uniform, ratings increased 60%. She appeared in Wes Craven's Dracula 2000. After Voyager ended in 2001, Ryan joined the cast of Boston Public in the role of Veronica Cooke, nicknamed "Ronnie", a frustrated lawyer who quits the bar to become a high-school teacher. The series' producer, David E. Kelley, wrote the role specifically for her. The series ended in 2004.
Ryan appeared in the romantic comedy film Down with Love and as Lydia in the independent film Men Cry Bullets. Ryan's first film lead was in the indie comedy The Last Man, as the last woman left on Earth. The film was released by Lions Gate Entertainment.
In 2005, she had a role in a pilot called Commuters, a suburban big city version of Desperate Housewives. She also had a recurring role as Charlotte Morgan on The O.C. in 2005; and she guest-starred as Courtney Reece on David E. Kelley's Boston Legal in 2006. Ryan then co-starred in the CBS legal drama Shark as Los Angeles County District Attorney Jessica Devlin alongside series lead James Woods, but she did not return for episodes aired after the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike although she was credited in all four episodes. The series did not air between January 27 and April 29, 2008. CBS cancelled the broadcast of the series after its Season 2 finale, May 20, 2008.
She guest starred as defense attorney Patrice La Rue on the April 7, 2009, episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, her first role since giving birth to her daughter Gisele. Ryan next won a 7-episode role on the TNT drama Leverage in Season 2 as a grifter named Tara Cole, to fill in while series regular Gina Bellman (Sophie) was on maternity leave.
She was in the Kevin Tancharoen-directed short film Mortal Kombat: Rebirth as Sonya Blade. Although originally a film, it marketed as a web series, with Episode 1 previews scheduled to appear online in June 2010. The web series, Mortal Kombat: Legacy, officially launched in March 2011. She will reprise the role in the 2013 film.
Ryan is a regular in the medical drama series Body of Proof, which premiered on March 29, 2011.
Ryan has also continued to appear in guest roles on genre television series, most recently on the Syfy series Warehouse 13 as United States Marine Major Amanda Lattimer, ex-wife of the series' male lead character Pete Lattimer, in the episode "Queen for a Day", aired August 1, 2011.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“My ambition in life: to become successful enough to resume my career as a neurasthenic.”
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—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)