An actress who starred in a beloved 1980s cult classic and an acclaimed 1990s TV medical drama was spotted this week in Los Angeles.
She was already a Tony-nominated stage star before landing her Hollywood breakthrough in a 1986 fantasy adventure with a cast that included Sean Connery.
Then during the following decade, she spent four years playing a nurse on a hospital show from the creator of Ally McBeal, Boston Legal and Big Little Lies.
In more recent years she has acted alongside Al Pacino in a movie he directed and featured on shows ranging from Grey’s Anatomy and House to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and How to Get Away with Murder.
She cut a stylish figure when she surfaced this week in a flowing plaid top and grey jeans accessorized with shades, a jaunty slouched-brim hat and a deep blue scarf.
Can you guess who she is?
An actress who starred in a beloved 1980s cult classic and an acclaimed 1990s TV medical drama surfaced this week in Los Angeles
She was already a Tony-nominated stage actress before landing her Hollywood breakthrough in a 1986 fantasy adventure with a cast that included Sean Connery
She is none other than Roxanne Hart, known to fans as Brenda Wyatt in the original Highlander and Nurse Camille Shutt on Chicago Hope.
Born in Trenton, New Jersey in 1952, she caught the theater bug in college through a class in the Greek classics and soon embarked on a stage career.
By the age of 30 she had earned a Tony nomination for her turn in Peter Nichols’ adultery drama Passion Play, amid a cast that included Frank Langella.
Three years later, in 1986, she landed her first lead role in film with Highlander, an action fantasy starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery.
Lambert led the cast of the picture as Connor MacLeod, a 16th century Scottish warrior who discovers he is immortal unless his head is severed.
He gets initiated into the secret world of immortals by the virtuoso swordsman Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, memorably portrayed by Connery.
Hart meanwhile played Brenda, a forensic scientist in 1980s New York City whose investigation into a local beheading spree leads her to Connor, by now living in disguise as a normal antique dealer.
Brenda’s persistent digging into the case results in her discovering Connor’s true identity, and a romantic relationship flowers between them.
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Did YOU guess who it was?
She is none other than Roxanne Hart, known to fans as Brenda Wyatt in the original Highlander, for which she is pictured in a 1985 publicity still with leading man Christopher Lambert
(from left) Hart is pictured with Adam Arkin, Mandy Patinkin, Hector Elizondo and E.G. Marshall on a 1994 publicity still for the CBS medical drama Chicago Hope
She cut a stylish figure when she surfaced this week in a flowing plaid top and grey jeans accessorized with shades, a jaunty slouched-brim hat and a deep blue scarf
On the personal front, she has been married since 1984 to actor Philip Casnoff of the Civil War miniseries North and South, and they have two children
When she first read the screenplay, she ‘thought it was the most grotesquely violent script I had read,’ she recalled with a laugh in an interview years later.
She added however that ‘Brenda was one of the strongest, most independent characters I had been presented with playing. She was quite bright.’
Highlander bombed at first but emerged as a camp classic, spawning a film and TV franchise and now an upcoming reboot with Henry Cavill and Russell Crowe.
From 1994 until 1998, Hart featured as a charity hospital nurse in David E. Kelley’s hit drama series Chicago Hope, which starred such names as Mandy Patinkin, Adam Arkin, Hector Elizondo, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Peter Berg and Barbara Hershey.
Her other TV work has included guest shots on a string of high-profile series like Law & Order; Walker, Texas Ranger; ER; Oz; Bones; The Closer; Criminal Minds; Private Practice; The Blacklist and The Young and the Restless.
In 2013 she acted with Al Pacino and Jessica Chastain in the docudrama Wilde Salomé, directed by Pacino and inspired by Oscar Wilde’s play about the execution of John the Baptist, with Hart playing the princess Herodias.
On the personal front, she has been married since 1984 to actor Philip Casnoff of the Civil War miniseries North and South, and they have two children.