Mulgrew commands attention

Kate Mulgrew as Capt. Kathryn Janeway in "Star Trek: Voyager"

Actress Kate Mulgrew, a Dubuque native, has a way of commanding the screen.

That was noticed 30 years ago, when a guest stint on “Dallas” led to her casting, age 23, as the lead in the TV series “Mrs. Columbo.” (Don’t remember it? It didn’t last long.)

Mulgrew, 54, is perhaps best known to mass audiences today as Capt. Kathyrn Janeway in the TV series “Star Trek: Voyager,” which ran from  1995 to 2001.

Katherine Kiernan Mulgrew was born April 29, 1955, in Dubuque, the second-oldest of eight children. She attended Wahlert High School in Dubuque and headed to New York City to study acting at age 17.

Her first big break came in 1975, when she was cast as Mary Ryan,  the heroine, on the daytime drama “Ryan’s Hope.”

In her younger years, she bore a striking resemblance to a youthful Katharine Hepburn. Sounded a bit like her, too.

“Kate Mulgrew, twenty-three, is a native of Dubuque, Iowa, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to her,” wrote Rex McGee in an article in American Film in 1979. “Her speech is clipped, and her voice cool and sophisticated.”

In recent years, Mulgrew has worked primarily on the stage, mostly notably playing Katharine Hepburn in the one-woman play “Tea at Five” in New York City and on tour. Check out video from the play here.

“She does a marvelous impersonation of Ms. Hepburn,” wrote Bruce Weber in a New York Times review published March 18, 2003.  “Those who revere Katharine Hepburn will find much to be entertained and reassured by in Ms. Mulgrew’s portrayal.”

But she may be heading back to TV. She was in the pilot of “Mercy,” a medical drama that NBC has picked up for next season. Her status in the cast is unknown.

For now, content yourself with this video montage of her TV appearances.

The pull of politics

• In 1999, she married her second husband, Tim Hagan, who ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for governor in Ohio in 2002. He serves on the Cuyahoga County commission in Ohio.
• On April 28, she returned to her hometown to be keynote speaker at the Dubuque County Democrats’ Hall of Fame Banquet. Her father, Thomas James Mulgrew, was inducted posthumously into the Hall of Fame.