Jennifer Hetrick: Vash in Star Trek and a Long TV Career

Jennifer Hetrick is an American actress who has worked steadily in television since the end of the 1970s. She is best known to science-fiction fans as Vash, the charming and slippery archaeologist who caught the eye of Captain Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Her credits stretch well beyond that role, though, and include some of the most popular network dramas of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

Early life and first roles

Hetrick was born on 12 May 1958 in Westerville, Ohio. She began acting professionally in 1979, when she appeared in the low-budget comedy Squeeze Play. Some early credits list her as Jenni Hetrick, and she played a character called Samantha in that film.

Before her breakthrough on television, she also appeared in commercials, including a series for Oil of Olay. Advertising work has remained a thread in her career, and she has been seen in ads for a range of consumer and health products over the years.

Her first notable television work came in the late 1980s. She guest starred in the NBC series Unsub in 1989, then moved on to a recurring part in one of the decade's biggest legal dramas.

Vash in Star Trek

Hetrick's best-known role is Vash, who first appeared in the third-season Next Generation episode "Captain's Holiday". Vash is a confident treasure hunter with a talent for getting out of trouble. She and Jean-Luc Picard form a flirtatious partnership while searching for a mysterious artefact on a pleasure planet.

She returned in the fourth-season episode "Qpid", where the omnipotent Q drops Picard and his crew into a Robin Hood fantasy. Hetrick played Vash and also took on the part of Maid Marian. The episode gave her room for comedy and swashbuckling, and it remains a fan favourite.

Her third appearance came in "Q-Less", an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in its first season. Vash turns up on the station after her adventures in the Gamma Quadrant, again tangling with Q. Hetrick has since spoken about the heavy make-up that one brief scene required, which took around eight hours to apply.

Though she appeared in only three episodes in total, Vash made a lasting impression. The character has been remembered at conventions and in tie-in merchandise, including an action figure.

L.A. Law and other network television

From 1989 to 1991 Hetrick had a recurring role in L.A. Law as Corrinne, the former spouse of divorce lawyer Arnie Becker. The part put her in front of a large weekly audience and ran at the same time as her first Vash episodes.

She went on to play Holly Reigeluth in several episodes of the ABC comedy-drama Civil Wars in 1992. She also guest starred on The Young Riders, Jake and the Fatman and Bodies of Evidence in the early 1990s.

In 1996 she appeared in the third season of The X-Files as Sharon Skinner, the former spouse of FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, in the episode "Avatar". The story tests Skinner's reputation and leads Mulder to suspect a supernatural cause.

Other genre and drama appearances

Hetrick has a long list of guest spots in series that mix crime, mystery and the fantastical. They include:

• Sliders in 1995, where she played more than one part
• Diagnosis Murder in 1994
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1998, in an uncredited turn as a teacher in "Homecoming"
• Profiler in 2000
• Alias in 2005

She later added NCIS, Prison Break and 24, in which she appeared during its seventh season. Her screen career, as listed in most databases, runs from 1979 to 2018.

Film work

Hetrick has appeared in only a handful of feature films. After Squeeze Play, she took small roles in No Regrets (2004), A Poor Kid's Guide to Success (2007) and an uncredited part in (500) Days of Summer (2009). She also appeared in television movies such as And Then There Was One (1994) and Absolute Strangers. Her natural home has always been the small screen.

Selected credits

The table below lists a selection of her screen work, newest first.

Legacy

Hetrick has often played independent, self-assured women, and that quality made Vash stand out. In an era when guest characters rarely returned, she earned three appearances across two Star Trek series. That is a rare achievement for a guest star.

Her career shows the value of the working character actor. She moved easily between legal drama, comedy, crime and science fiction, and she was reliable in each. For many viewers, though, she will always be the woman who made Captain Picard lose his composure.