Though she's appeared on both the big and small screens, Helgenberger has always been more at home on the latter. After starting out on the daytime soap Ryan's Hope, she made the jump to prime time in the late '80s as a savvy prostitute on China Beach and won an Emmy for her work. In the '90s she was seemingly the queen of Lifetime movies with occasional forays into features. But she was over 40 when she landed her seminal role as an ex-stripper turned forensic specialist on the original CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.