Kate Mulgrew Photo: supplied
Kate Mulgrew is famous for her roles as Star Trek's first female captain and as Red in Orange Is The New Black, but inspiring a new generation of young women might be her most satisfying role.
The American actor is appearing at the Armageddon pop culture convention in Auckland this weekend.
Mulgrew said she feels something close to "euphoria" knowing her role as Star Trek's first female captain inspired young women during the 1990s.
"If playing Captain Janeway has allowed me that privilege and that honour, I could not be more grateful.
"That single possibility alone, that perhaps I affected a handful of young women who were maybe thinking of going into research and turned them outward or upward in their STEM choices or decisions, I cannot begin to tell you how satisfying that is."
She has written two memoirs - Born with Teeth was published in 2015, while How to Forget: A Daughter's Memoir came out in 2019.
The first book gained its title from the fact Mulgrew was born with a full set of prenatal teeth.
"Which if you know your Shakespeare... indicates that you were born a witch.
"My mother said 'of course my first born daughter was born a witch' and was absolutely delighted."
The second memoir delves into the nine years she spent caring for her mother, as she descended into the fog of Alzheimer's disease.
While it was "Hell", she said suffering can unearth something precious.
"Suffering in and of itself is what binds us, what holds us together, what clarifies us to one another.
"It's the one thing, suffering, that allows us to step outside our own consciousness for a moment and realise that we are indeed all in this together.
"I got to share a little bit of my mother's suffering, which one does vicariously when one loves as much as I loved my mother."
Kate Mulgrew as "Red' Photo: Orange Is The New Black S4
Her father was a tougher proposition, an Irish wordsmith who drank heavily.
"First of all, I think they have some kind of social anxiety.
"In the Irish sense... in the pub, it was a way of life.
"For my father... in Iowa where I grew up, to meet his mates at the end of the day and have a few belts, before coming home and being greeted by eight screaming children and a wife who was undoubtedly pregnant once more. I think it was girding his loins - that doesn't excuse it.
"I wonder if I ever really had a terrific sober conversation with him - maybe the night before he died."
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When not needed on set as Galina Reznikov in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, Mulgrew spent five years living on and off in a small village just outside Galway in Ireland.
During the "damp, cold, wet, austere, and gorgeous winters of Ireland", she overcame the challenges of living alone in a strange land and wrote How to Forget.
"At my age - I'm 68 - you learn to either love the loneliness and embrace it or a sort of terror sets in.
"Of course it was hard - all hard things are somehow strangely more gratifying than if they're not.
"But I love Ireland. I love it deeply. It's my spiritual place," she said.
Mulgrew's partner is Jewish and she feels concerned by the conflicts in Israel, as well as the war in Ukraine, climate change, and many other global threats.
"We've become inured to one another in the way of truly understanding one another's suffering.
"We've become isolated and war-like and you know what that leads to.
"We will need to have some sort of massive course correction - and I hope that it will be good," she said.
