Kate Mulgrew plays Kathryn Janeway, the Captain of the U.S.S. Voyager. Kate Mulgrew became the first female captain in the history of the Star Trek Franchise. She grew up in Dubuque, Iowa. She is the oldest girl in a family of eight. She left home at the age of 17 and traveled to New York City. She was accepted into Stella Adler's Conservatory to study acting when she enrolled at New York University. She left the university at the end of her junior year to become a full-time actress.

One of her first roles she got in the early stages of her acting career was a role as Mary Hope in the television series, "Ryan's Hope". At the age of 23, she earned the role Kate Colombo in "Kate Loves a Mystery". She later went onto several feature films with Pierce Brosnan in "The Manions of America", Danny DeVito and Billy Crystal in, "Throw Momma from the Train" to name a few.