The fleet's most talented, passionate and rebellious Viper pilot (callsign "Starbuck") has been burdened with post-traumatic confusion and anger from a lifetime of abuse, first at her mother's hands and later as a prisoner of the Cylon known as Leoben. Recently, her rocky but affectionate marriage to Sam Anders barely weathered her affair with Lee Adama. Then she became plagued by visions of a mandala — a strange swirling shape that had haunted her thoughts throughout her life. To the horror of all who cared about her, Kara plunged her Viper into a swirling planetary storm, where her Viper exploded. Months later, when the fleet stood on the brink of a calamitous battle with the Cylons, Kara made a seemingly miraculous return to life to announce that she has traveled to Earth — and that she can guide the fleet there.
Born and raised in Portland, Ore., Katee Sackhoff stars as the hotshot pilot Starbuck on the critically acclaimed Syfy series Battlestar Galactica. She also played a pivotal role on NBC's reincarnation of Bionic Woman. As Sarah Corvus, Sackhoff played the original bionic woman and nemesis of Jaime Sommers.
Upon graduating high school, Sackhoff moved to Los Angeles and quickly garnered attention and praise as she secured some competitive leading roles in a variety of film and television projects. It began with a lead role in the MTV pilot Locust Valley, which led to a leading role in the Fox Family Channel series The Fearing Mind and a starring role, opposite Jamie Lee Curtis, in Dimension Films' Halloween: Resurrection.
Sackhoff also secured a lead in the CBS series The Education of Max Bickford, in which she played the daughter of Richard Dreyfuss's title character.