Summer Glau

"If I could count on both hands and toes the number of times I’ve seen Dirty Dancing! I practiced all the moves in my mirror and I love that story. I even love the new one [Havana Nights] and I would be overjoyed to get to do a ballroom dancing project. I love how they take a shy girl who’s not very sexy and who isn’t very comfortable with herself and they turn her into this really confident, hot, little –- she gets out there and she blossoms."

If you haven't checked out Firefly or Serenity by now, you may soon catch Summer Glau as the beautiful, mysterious Cameron Phillips in The Sarah Connor Chronicles! Yes, it's official. Summer's sci-fi, action-thriller career is only just warming up. But what is this young woman really like? Is she anything like the crazy characters she plays?

Ballerina turned Action Heroine

Summer Lyn Glau was born on July 24, 1981, in San Antonio Texas. From an early age, Summer trained to be a ballerina. Because of her rigorous schedule, she was homeschooled by her mother. Besides traditional ballet, she studied tango and flamenco. She danced at the Majestic Theatre in shows like Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, The Happy Widow, Peer Gynt or Paint Your Wagon.  

After suffering a terrible injury, Summer was forced to stop dancing in order to heal.  During the time off, she visited friends in Los Angeles and decided to take a stab at acting. Her first major acting role was on Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off series, Angel, in the 2002 episode Waiting in the Wings. Demonstrating both her acting skills and ballet training, Summer played the Prima Ballerina trapped in a "time echo" for over 100 years.  

Summer heats up the Screen

Shortly after her guest appearance on Angel, Summer was cast as River Tam in Joss Whedon's Firefly and soon became a beloved sci-fi heroine to millions. Even though the television series was short lived, Summer moved on to other film and television roles. She gained small roles in Cold Case, CSI, The Unit and The 4400. A big fan of science fiction herself, Summer is attracted to roles where she gets to do action and mystery scenes.   

Summer Glau Fun Facts & Trivia

• Summer used her own childood memories as inspiration to play River Tam in Firefly & Serenity.
• Summer's starsign is Leo.  She's a cool cat most at home in the limelight.
• Summer is a San Antonio, Texas native. Even though she grew up close to the Mexican border, she’s not of Latin origins. Her ancestors were German, Irish and Scottish.
• Summer has said that, if she wasn’t acting, she would go back to theater.
• Summer's favourite music is Tango. She also enjoys listening to Keane, The Killers, White Stripes and James Blunt.
• Fight choregoraphers created a wushu kung-fu kick boxing hybrid for River Tam's fighting style, one suited to Summer's body. She spent 9 months preparing for Serenity (6 months of fight training & 3 months in a fightcamp).
• She blew a line at the end of a particularly long and difficult scene on "Firefly" and as a result, the cast made a running gag of shouting her name if they forgot their lines during a scene (this continued while they were shooting Serenity, too).
• Her favorite foods are apple pie and peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. She also is a fan of hot tea.
• Summer recently injured herself by staying to close to shooting range while practicing for The Sarah Connor Chronicles. She now has a small scar on her face that producers are letting show in the series.
• She appeared on-screen with real-life boyfriend Daniel Wisler on The Unit.
• Summer was originally the actress to play the part of Lilly Moore on The 4400, but she had to cancel because the role conflicted with schedules for filming Serenity.

Summer in the trailer for The Sarah Connor Chronicles