Summer Glau Pictures, Biography, Images, Videos, News

Summer Lyn Glau (born July 24, 1981) is an American actress and dancer, known for playing River Tam in the science fiction series Firefly and follow-up movie Serenity, and for playing Cameron in the series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Glau was born in San Antonio, Texas, where she grew up with her two younger sisters, Christie and Kaitlin. She is of Scots-Irish and German descent. Her mother is a schoolteacher and her father a general contractor.

Glau received a scholarship to a ballet company and was home-schooled from grades 3 to 12 to accommodate her ballet training. Glau was classically trained as a ballet dancer and also studied tango and flamenco. After a serious ankle injury ended her dancing career, Glau took time off from dancing to visit friends in Los Angeles, where she auditioned for several television commercials.[citation needed] Glau later moved to Los Angeles in 2002 to pursue a more active acting career.

Glau's first television credit was a guest role as a ballerina on the 2002 episode "Waiting in the Wings" (episode 3x13) of the television series Angel. There she caught the eye of director Joss Whedon, who later cast her in his critically acclaimed but ultimately short-lived TV series Firefly as River Tam, a role she reprised for the show's feature film sequel, Serenity. Glau previously auditioned for the role as a Pink Ranger on one of the Power Rangers series before meeting Joss Whedon.

Glau appeared on the episode "Love Conquers Al" (1x06) of the TV series Cold Case. She had a small role in the film Sleepover, in which she played a high school senior named Shelly. She also appeared in the CSI episode "What's Eating Gilbert Grissom?," and the second season of The Unit; portraying Crystal Burns, the girlfriend of Jeremy Erhart. In 2006, Glau played Tess Doerner, a paranoid schizophrenic returnee in the second season premiere of The 4400 (episode "Wake-Up Call"), and became an essential recurring character from Season 3 onwards. She also starred in the science fiction film Mammoth. Glau was cast in the ABC Family TV movie The Initiation of Sarah.

In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a series that debuted January 13, 2008, Glau plays the role of Cameron Phillips, a Terminator infiltration unit sent back to protect John Connor and Sarah Connor from Skynet. The seventh episode of the series, "The Demon Hand," included several scenes in which Glau (in character as Cameron) dances ballet. Glau also guest starred as herself in episode seventeen of the second season of The Big Bang Theory.

On August 26, 2009, it was confirmed after much speculation that Glau would be joining the cast of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse for at least two episodes in the early part of the show's second season. She will portray Bennett, the programmer for a rival Dollhouse.

Summer Glau has been involved in a number of charities, such as B.C. Women's Hospital & Health Centre where she autographed several teddy bears to be sold on eBay to help raise money for the Hospital. Glau is an animal lover and has shown support to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Los Angeles, where she hand-painted a decorative pet bowl that was later sold on eBay to raise funds. She was also a vegetarian from 1995 to 2005.