Marina Sirtis is a British actress of Greek descent born in London, England on March 29th, 1955. Marina has appeared in several science fiction vehicles, but is best known for her potrayal of Betazoid counselor Deanna Troi on the hit TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Marina's parents did not wish for her to get into acting, but after graduating high school, she secretly enrolled at the Guild Hall School of Music and Drama. After graduation, she did some theater and made small appearances in various English productions. In 1987, she tried out for the new Gene Roddeberry-driven Star Trek series Star Trek: The Next Generation. With only marginal familiarity of the original series, Sirtis initially tried out for the part of Tactical Officer Tasha Yar. The role eventually went to American actress Denise Crosby and Sirtis was given the part of counselor Deanna Troi. She appeared in all 176 episodes of the series as well as the four "NextGen" films, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection and Star Trek: Nemesis. Sirtis also made guest appearances as Troi on episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise.

Outside the world of Star Trek, Marina also played a character named Olivia "Liv" Kohler in "The Grell" episode of The Outer Limits. In 1999, she appeared in the "The Cloister" episode of Earth: Final Conflict as Sister Margarette. She appeared in the season four episode of Stargate SG-1 entitled "Watergate" playing a Russian scientist named Doctor Svetlana Markov. In 2008, she played Attorney Barry in InAlienable and in 2009 she portrayed a character named Paxton in Annihilation Earth.