Mary Kay Adams has played European royalty, an ambassador's aide, and the head of a noble household, but you'd have only recognized her as the first. That's because she played Babylon 5's Na'Toth and Deep Space Nine's Grilka in full prosthetic makeup. Not that she wasn't a babe even with forehead ridges. Hey, both Quark and Worf lusted after her.

Surprisingly, the long-time star of Guiding Light felt very comfortable in Grilka's Klingon skin. "So many times in Hollywood, or in show business in general, women are not really allowed to be strong," she observed in a recent interview from New York, where the daytime drama films. "We are tempered. Our power is taken away. Playing the Klingon woman was such a joy because throughout my entire career I have had directors say to me, 'OK, Mary Kay, just pull back a little bit.' This was the first time I was ever told, 'OK, we need you to be stronger!' It was Christmas!"

The Ferengi bartender met Grilka in "The House of Quark" when he accidentally killed her husband in a drunken brawl, then learned that under Klingon law, he was obligated to marry her. In the end, he rescued her family's finances, for which Grilka was so grateful that she later let him court her.

Grilka's most memorable line was probably, "I'm grateful to you, Quark, for helping me. That is why I am going to let you take your hand off my thigh instead of shattering every bone in your body." After the pair became lovers, they ended up in Deep Space Nine's infirmary to be treated for the consequences of unbridled Klingon passion.

"It was such a gift to be able to take it to the hilt and not be self-conscious like you can be in other roles," recalled Adams. "You're worrying, 'Uh-oh, they're going to be afraid of me now!' If you are a strong woman, you're labeled a bitch, or threatening, or difficult, or temperamental, or a whole lot of other things."

Looking For Par'Mach
A fan of science fiction from her childhood, when her father read genre novels, Adams grew up wanting to be a character on the original Star Trek series. "When I was a little girl, my brother and sister and I would play in the backyard, and I was Captain Kirk, and he was Bones, and she was Spock," the actress laughed. "We had some of the original Star Trek toys, like the little phaser that shot the plastic disks out, and we had little communicators."

Her statuesque looks made Adams a natural to play beauty queens, which she did on several soap operas. Her resume includes One Life To Live and As the World Turns. But after changing agents in Los Angeles in 1994, she auditioned for Deep Space Nine. "I read the script, and I laughed out loud, and I remember thinking, 'I have to do this role.' God was with me, and I did!"

The actress thought the character was "fantastic," with all the strength of her Klingon attributes, "but then she also has a sense of humor. I just thought she was the bee's knees." Asked whether Grilka had a real crush on Quark or whether she was just grateful to him for saving her finances, Adams said enthusiastically, "Oh, absolutely it was real! We slept together!"

In the follow-up episode, "Looking For Par'Mach in All the Wrong Places," Worf becomes smitten with Grilka as well, but because he has been dishonored among the Klingons, he cannot court her. "Losing to a Ferengi was the cherry on top of it all!" laughed Adams. "They had said to us when we had gotten the script, play it very Cyrano de Bergerac." So Worf wooed and won Grilka for Quark, then found Dax waiting for him to realize she was a much better match for him.

Then the costumers would paste the facemask on to match. "They cut the mask right up underneath the eye, and popped those contacts in. We couldn't see or hear. It was like being submerged. The only thing that was ours were our lips. Typically, normal calls were around 5 in the morning and you'd go as late as 7:30 at night." It was a grueling schedule, and the character disappeared from the series for a long stretch during Adams' tenure, presumably killed in a terrorist attack.

After moving back to New York following five years of bi-coastal living, Adams has been working primarily on daytime, where she has played the role of India von Halkein on Guiding Light on and off since 1984. The genres of science fiction and soaps both have passionate followings, and Adams feels blessed to have been welcomed by both.

"You hear the same thing. If I had a nickel for every time someone said condescendingly, 'Oh, I don't watch soaps,' and it's the same thing I hear with, 'Oh, I don't watch science fiction." So what? Watch what you want to watch!" In both instances she describes the audiences as "a very knowledgeable, very supportive, very loyal group of fans who take it very seriously, and they care. That's one of the greatest gifts that an actor can have. They care about you personally. They care about the characters. They care about the integrity of the show."