Childhood
Ryan was born Jeri Lynn Zimmermann in 1968 in Munich, Germany to American parents; she has one older brother, Mark. Her father was in the United States Army and as a military brat she grew up on military bases in Kansas, Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia, and Texas.(Star Trek Communicator magazine) When Ryan was eleven, the family settled in Paducah, Kentucky. After Ryan graduated from high school in 1986 (as a National Merit Scholar), she attended Northwestern University, where she was a member of the Alpha Phi sorority. In 1989, Ryan became Miss Illinois and was a preliminary swimsuit winner at the Miss America Pageant. Jeri finished as the third runner-up to Miss America 1990, Debbye Turner. Ryan graduated from Northwestern in 1990 with a BA in Theatre.
Career
Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine
Ryan was hired for a role in Planes, Trains & Automobiles during the summer prior to her freshman year at Northwestern, but was cut out of the final version due to her (in her own words) "ruining every scene I was in" by laughing. 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 TV shows like Melrose Place, Matlock, and The Sentinel as well as TV movies such as Co-Ed Call Girl.
Her big break came when she won a regular role as an extraterrestrial investigator named Juliet Stuart on the TV show Dark Skies. The show was cancelled after one season, but the role had drawn the attention of the science-fiction community.
In 1997, Ryan was cast to play Seven of Nine, a Borg drone freed from the collective on the science fiction series Star Trek: Voyager. The role drew her instant fame and her wardrobe made her a sex symbol among some science-fiction fans. It also drew criticism from some fans who felt that character was created to add sexuality to the show, and who felt that a disproportionate number of episodes focused on her character to the exclusion of others. However, her appearance also coincided with higher ratings and more positive critical reviews of Voyager, which were partly attributed to better screenwriting and partly due to her character being both intrinsically interesting and well-acted. Seven of Nine appeared on seven TV Guide covers in the USA.
After Voyager ended in 2001, Ryan joined the cast of Boston Public in the role of Ronnie Cooke, a frustrated lawyer who quits to become a high school teacher. The show's producer, David E. Kelley, wrote the role specifically for her. The show was cancelled in 2004.
Ryan has recently appeared in films, such as Down With Love. Ryan played Lydia in the independent film Men Cry Bullets, with a rave review for her performance from Roger Ebert. Jeri then starred in her first film lead in the indie comedy "The Last Man", playing the last woman on Earth, released by Lion's Gate.
She also had a recurring role on The O.C. (as Charlotte Morgan) in the autumn of 2005 and guest-starred on David E. Kelley's Boston Legal in 2006.
Ryan stars in the new CBS legal drama Shark; she plays Los Angeles District Attorney Jessica Devlin, opposite Hollywood actor James Woods.
Personal life
In 1990, while dealing blackjack at a charity event, Jeri Lynn met investment banker and future political candidate Jack Ryan. The couple married in 1991 and had a son, Alex, in 1994. Throughout the marriage, Ryan and her husband took turns commuting between Los Angeles and Chicago for their careers, but finally divorced in 1999. Although Ryan mentioned (in an interview for Star Trek), that the frequent separations had been difficult for the marriage, the reasons behind the divorce were kept sealed at their mutual request.
Five years later, when Jack Ryan's Senate campaign began, the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have the records released. Both Jeri and Jack agreed to make their divorce records public, but not the custody records, claiming that their release could be harmful to their son.
On June 22, 2004, the California judge (Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider) in the case agreed to release the custody files; the decision generated much controversy because it went against both parents' direct request and because it generally reversed the early decision to seal the papers in the best interest of the child. It was revealed that, six years previously, Jeri had accused Jack Ryan of asking her to perform sexual acts with him in public, and in adult clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris. Jeri Ryan described one as "a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling." Jack Ryan denied these allegations. Although Jeri Ryan refused to comment on the matter during the campaign, the document disclosure led Jack Ryan to withdraw his Republican candidacy for an open United States Senate seat in Illinois which was eventually won by Barack Obama.
During later seasons of Star Trek Voyager she was romantically linked to the series producer Brannon Braga.
Jeri Ryan has long admitted to a love of food, and while starring in Boston Public, she moonlighted on weekends in the kitchen of the Los Angeles restaurant The House. In February of 2005, she opened - in partnership with her boyfriend, Chef Christophe Éme - the restaurant Ortolan. Located on Third Street in Los Angeles, California, the restaurant serves French food with a modern interpretation. In July 2006 Ryan (while promoting her new television series Shark during the Television Critics Association press tour), announced that she and Émé are engaged.
