Liz Vassey

Born in the city of Raleigh, NC, in 1972 and raised in the Tampa Bay, FL, area, Elizabeth Vassey began her career in entertainment at the age of nine years old, her debut role being the lead in a local production of the musical "Oliver!," as a girl was required to hit all of the highest notes in the songs. With encouragement from her mother, she would go on to appear in around fifty community theatre productions during her teenage years, an experience which she has said gave her a good grounding in thinking about acting in purely artistic terms, and in approaching a production as a group effort of the combined cast and crew. The elegant brunette's first role was as Emily Ann Sago in the long-running soap opera "All My Children" (ABC 1970-2011), a part she secured at the age of sixteen. The "good girl" of the small town of Pine Valley, Pennsylvania, Emily had been played by two actresses previously in her younger years, with Vassey the final actress to play the part. Her involvement with "All My Children" lasted for three years until the character was written out in 1992, with Vassey earning a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 1990 at the age of eighteen, for Outstanding Juvenile Female in a Drama Series. During her time on "All My Children" and throughout the 1990s, Vassey would go on to become a prolific television actress, with one-off roles in highly-rated shows including "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (Syndicated 1987-1994), "Beverly Hills, 90210" (Fox 1990-2000) and "Married...With Children" (Fox 1987-1997), She earned her first recurring prime-time role in the first season of medical drama "ER" (NBC 1994-2009) as Liz, a medical student who tended to flirt with the male doctors of the emergency room. She then appeared in the short-lived sitcom "Brotherly Love" (NBC 1995-96 / WB 1996-97), as conceptual artist and car mechanic Lou. Vassey's next major role was the part of Captain Liberty in live-action superhero series "The Tick" (Fox 2001-02), a short-lived series that immediately gained a rabid cult following, many of whom were particularly fixated on her leotard-wearing crime fighter. The following year saw a recurring role as Dr. Carrie Allen in the Eliza Dushku-starring supernatural crime thriller "Tru Calling" (Fox 2003-05) and a rare big-screen film role in the Tommy Lee Jones vehicle "Man of the House" (2005). A year after marrying husband David Emmerichs, a camera operator, in 2004, Vassey secured the role which would define her career up to this point. As Wendy Simms, a DNA technician and later field agent whose obsession with "Star Trek" (NBC 1966-69) would make her character unique, Vassey proved to be both a popular member of the cast with viewers of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (CBS 2000-15) and a heartthrob figure to male viewers. After five seasons on the show during which her character's profile was steadily escalated, the decision to write her out in 2010 inspired a Facebook campaign to reinstate her, to no avail. Following her departure, Vassey returned to the cast of "Three and a Half Men" (CBS 2003-15), a show she had guest-starred on prior to "CSI", for a three-episode stint.