Catherine Hicks

The Weight of Playing Marilyn

Catherine Hicks didn't need decades for critics to take notice of her. In 1980, she stepped into the role of Marilyn Monroe in a TV movie and earned an Emmy nomination. She was 29 years old and already carried the weight of playing Hollywood's greatest legend in Marilyn: The Untold Story. That ABC production was the springboard that pulled her off the New York stage and into living rooms across the country.

It was a risky bet that paid off.

Before that breakthrough, she appeared on the soap Ryan's Hope and shared the stage with Jack Lemmon in the Broadway play Tribute. Hicks moved easily between television drama and the stage. But mainstream film had a place for her in the fantasy genre that no one saw coming. In 1986, she appeared in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home as biologist Gillian Taylor. The film grossed 133 million dollars and gave her a global visibility that theater never could have.

The Doll and Love on Set

In 1988, she accepted the role of Karen Barclay in Child’s Play. The premise of a doll possessed by a killer sounded like textbook B-movie material. Yet the film worked because Hicks took the script seriously. She played a desperate widowed mother with a sobriety that lifted the original material above other horror productions of the era.

The shoot changed her personal life forever.

There she met Kevin Yagher, the man behind Chucky's special effects and physical design. They married in 1990, and their union became one of the most stable in an industry used to quickie divorces. Hicks never sought the spotlight at parties or tabloid scandals. She preferred to work steadily on projects that let her keep a private life that stayed out of the public eye in Los Angeles.

America's Mom and the Television Haven

The project that took up the most of her schedule was 7th Heaven. Between 1996 and 2007, she played Annie Camden in a long-running family drama. Over 239 episodes of conservative morals and domestic conflict gave her complete financial security. Hicks's salary in the later seasons reflected her status as a key pillar of the series, although harsh critics accused her of taking part in an overly saccharine show.

The industry typecast her as the perfect mother for more than a decade.

After the series ended in 2007, she turned to TV movies and smaller productions. In 2011 she shot A Christmas Wedding Tail, and in 2016 she appeared in the thriller Honeymoon from Hell. She didn't pursue big comebacks on the big screen or projects that demanded grueling promotional tours. As a result, her work pace slowed by choice so she could focus on charity work and her family. In 1989, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films presented her with the Saturn Award for Best Actress.