Irene Tsu (born 4 November 1943; age 81) is the actress who played Mary Kim in the Star Trek: Voyager third and seventh season episodes "Favorite Son" and "Author, Author".
Tsu was born in Shanghai to a wealthy banker father and a painter mother. Her father was a close associate of Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai Shek and when the opposing communist faction led by Mao Zedong won the Chinese civil war in 1949, they fled the country and relocated to Taiwan. While her father stayed in Taiwan, Tsu, her mother and her younger sister moved to Hong Kong within a year, where Irene attended parochial school and studied ballet.
The family relocated to the United States and settled in New York City when Irene was twelve. As a teenager in the late 1950s, Tsu auditioned and got a part as a dancer in the Broadway musical Flower Drum Song. In 1960, she got a part in the Broadway play The World of Suzie Wong, starring William Shatner and France Nuyen. In 1961, she won the Miss Chinatown beauty pageant in San Francisco.
She made her uncredited film debut the same year in the movie adaptation of Flower Drum Song (with Shep Houghton and Paul Sorensen). She played her first speaking role in the 1963 film Take Her, She's Mine, which started her acting career.
In 1964, Tsu appeared in an episode of Gene Roddenberry's The Lieutenant, starring Gary Lockwood, guest starring Richard Evans, and directed by Vincent McEveety.
She also guest starred in episodes of series such as Perry Mason (with Ken Lynch and Bill Zuckert), My Favorite Martian (starring Ray Walston), I Spy (with Kai J. Wong, directed by Leo Penn), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (with Lloyd Kino), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (with Glenn Corbett, Lilyan Chauvin, and David Armstrong and another episode with Kim Darby, Jill Ireland, Jason Wingreen, Grant Woods, Sharyn Hillyer, Dick Crockett, Paul Baxley, Jerry Summers, and Kai J. Wong), The Wild Wild West (with Dick Cangey, Al Roberts, and Kai J. Wong), and Mission: Impossible (with Lou Antonio and the voice of Robert C. Johnson).
Tsu had starred alongside Voyager co-star Robert Ito previously in 1966, in Women of the Prehistoric Planet. The movie also starred Adam Roarke. She co-starred with George Takei and Jason Evers in The Green Berets (1968).
She continued her acting career steadily until the early 2010s, with guest-starring roles in series such as Ironside, The Rockford Files (with Barbara Babcock, Byron Morrow, and Robert Strong), Wonder Woman, Airwolf (with Branscombe Richmond, Robert Ito, Ed McCready, Jeff Imada), Trapper John, M.D. (with Madge Sinclair and Clyde Kusatsu), Baywatch Nights (with Dey Young and Jeff Imada), Strong Medicine (starring Jenifer Lewis, with Larry Cedar, Michelle Krusiec, and Keone Young, created by Whoopi Goldberg), CSI: NY (with Cyia Batten), Cold Case (with Tzi Ma), and Law & Order: Los Angeles (with Titus Welliver, Tamlyn Tomita, Victor Garber, and Steve Vinovich).
Tsu also had roles in films like Airport 1975 (1974, with Gene Dynarski, Susan French, Ted Gehring, Robert Ito, Lloyd Kino, Clyde Kusatsu, Charles Seel, and Sally Yarnell), Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986, with Bernadette Pelletier), Steele Justice (1987, with Ronnie Cox, Bernie Casey, Joseph Campanella, David L. Lander, and Jeff Imada), Unbecoming Age (1992, starring Diane Salinger, with Nicholas Guest, Bill Irwin, Wallace Shawn, and J.D. Walters), and Mr. Jones (1993, with Lauren Tom and Thomas Kopache).
In 1971, Tsu married Hungarian director Ivan Nagy with who she has one daughter. The couple divorced in 1980. From 1978 until 1989, Tsu was CEO and head designer for her own leisure apparel company, The IT Company/Irene Tsu Designs. Since 1990, Irene has been a realtor for Coldwell Banker in Beverly Hills, California. She has also been teaching yoga in Los Angeles.
External links[]
- Irene Tsu at the Internet Movie Database
- Irene Tsu at Wikipedia