Star Trek

Roxann Dawson

Actor, director, producer, writer, wife and mother: no one will ever accuse Roxann Dawson of sitting back on her laurels and waiting for life to come to her.  Born in Los Angeles, she received a degree in theater arts from the University of California at Berkeley and then, like many young actors, headed east to fulfill her theatrical ambitions.  She scored roles both on and off Broadway in shows like A Chorus Line, The Early Girl, and Julie Taymor’s production of The Tempest.  Returning to L.A., Dawson won a role in the 1985 film version of A Chorus Line, but primarily focused on television work, appearing in Baywatch, The Untouchables and Seven Days and playing recurring characters in Nightingales, Matlock, Jake and the Fatman, and The Round Table.  Following her casting as B’Elanna Torres in Star Trek: Voyager, Dawson became one of the few female actors to get involved with the Star Trek franchise’s on-the-job “directors in training” program.  Like fellow cast member Robert Duncan McNeill, she now focuses primarily on directing, with ten episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise, eleven of Crossing Jordan, eight of Cold Case and three of Heroes to her credit, as well as shorter stints directing episodes for hit shows like Lost, The O.C., The Closer, Caprica and The Mentalist.  Dawson also served as a producer on Cold Case and Crossing Jordan, and wrote the science fiction-oriented The Tenebrae Trilogy for Simon & Schuster.   She is married to casting director Eric Dawson and has two children.