Biography

GRACE PARK

The actress Grace Park was born in Los Angeles, California. Her family moved to Vancouver in Canada when she was 22 months old. Grace considers herself to be a Canadian, while also recognizing her Korean heritage.

Biographical Notes

Vancouver native Grace Park broke into film with a small role in the Jet Li movie "Romeo Must Die". In just a few years, she has racked up an impressive list of genre credits, including appearances in "The Outer Limits", "Halloween 8", "Beyond Belief", "Dark Angel", "The Immortal" and "Stargate SG-1".

She holds a degree in Psychology and speaks English, Korean, some French and Cantonese, and is currently improving her Spanish.

Audition for Battlestar

Grace Park was one of the last two finalists up for the role of the new female " kara "Starbuck" Thrace", the other being Katee Sackhoff, who ultimately got the part.

IMDB PROFILE - Grace Park

Sharon 'Boomer' Valerii

Galactica copy

The first copy of the Sharon model is encountered on Galactica, where she has been serving as a Raptor pilot for two years (where she came from before this infiltration is unknown). She is a "sleeper" agent, programmed with false memories to think she is human.

Agent in Disguise

Initially, "Boomer" Valerii is a "sleeper" agent, unaware of her Cylon status. As far as she is aware, she was born on the mining colony of Troy, the daughter of a family from Aerelon (Flesh and Bone). Troy itself was destroyed in an unexplained cataclysm, allowing Boomer's background to be established as that of an orphan.

Following her arrival on-board Galactica, she enters into a relationship with the ship's Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol, which is against military protocols concerning fraternization between officers and non-officers. Whether this is unintentional, or a subconcious reaction to her Cylon personality program is unclear.

At the time of the Cylon attack, Boomer is flying her Raptor to Caprica with Galactica's last remaining operational Viper squadron when they learn of the attacks and attempt to engage two Cylon Raiders. However, the Viper squadron is destroyed (their ships powered down by their tainted CNP), and the Raptor is damaged while trying to escape, forcing Boomer and Helo to make an emergency landing on Caprica.

After repairing the Raptor, Helo and Boomer are mobbed by desperate civilians and undertake an unexpected rescue operation, lifting a number of children and adults from the planet. However, Helo chooses to give up his place aboard the Raptor so that Dr. Gaius Baltar can be rescued (Miniseries).

After being found by Laura Roslin's group of stranded military and civilian ships, Boomer works hard within the new civilian Fleet, assisting Laura Roslin's attempts to gather other stranded civilian ships within the space surrounding Caprica as possible. She finds a number of ships critical to the fledgling Fleet's survival (such as a fuel tanker). After the Fleet (with Galactica leading it) leaves the solar system of the Colonies, Boomer aids in other critical acts, such as the discovery of a tylium-rich asteroid, replete with an active Cylon mine (The Hand of God), and locating a source of water to replenish the Fleet's lost supply after a sabotage of Galactica's stores (Water).

The Sleeper Awakens

However, at the same time she is apparently supporting the Fleet, Boomer's underlying Cylon programming periodically emerges. Her Cylon programming is the cause of the sabotage Galactica's water tanks (Water). Later, she likely assists a copy of Aaron Doral to access to a munitions store. The Doral copy constructs a suicide bomb which very nearly kills Commander Adama and Colonel Tigh.

Having "awoken" to her human personality shortly after the bombs used to destroy Galactica's water tanks were planted, she finds herself soaking wet. Boomer's human personality becomes increasingly concerned that she is not all she appears. Her worry increases when she experiences a certain "attraction" to a captured Cylon Raider, and is able to give insight into how it can be properly assessed and understood ("Six Degrees of Separation", "Flesh and Bone"). Her concerns are further elevated when, following the bombing by Doral, Galactica's Master-at-Arms, Sergeant Hadrian suspects her and Tyrol of Cylon complicity (Litmus).

Boomer is isolated from Tyrol following this event, and he later ends their relationship following the arrest of Specialist Socinus (Litmus). Facing Tyrol's own suspicions concerning her activities immediately before the bombing, Boomer finds herself emotionally isolated and stressed. She takes the Cylon detector test created by Dr. Gaius Baltar. Baltar hides the positive test results to cover himself from recrimination from other Cylon agents and lies to the young lieutenant (Flesh and Bone). Boomer finds short solace in his test results but deals with increasing anonymous accusations from others when she finds the word "CYLON" written on the mirror of her locker (Six Degrees of Separation).

Frightened and isolated, Boomer withdraws into herself and attempts suicide, but finds herself initially unable to do so. During her second attempt, she is interrupted by Dr. Baltar who, rather than discouraging her, essentially gives her his blessing on her attempt. Following his departure from the bunkroom, Boomer succeeds in shooting herself, but her Cylon personality apparently interrupts the attempt. Boomer can only severely wound herself in the face (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I).

After kara absconds with the captured Raider intended for an attack on a basestar orbiting Kobol, Commander Adama orders Boomer and ECO Racetrack to use a Cylon Transponder in their Raptor to infiltrate the basestar place a nuclear warhead within to destroy it. The mission is a success. However, when the weapon would not auto-release from the Raptor after landing, Boomer exits the ship and into the expanse of the basestar's interior, where she encounters a dozen copies of herself, confirming her worse fears. Boomer escapes in the Raptor while her copies caress the weapon just before it detonates and destroys the basestar. Back on Galactica, her encounter with her copies on the basestar apparently forces Boomer's Cylon personality to emerge once more, with astonishing repercussions: on accepting thanks from Commander Adama for the mission, she shoots and seriously wounds him (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II).

Boomer's Dark Discovery and Demise

Boomer is quickly restrained by guards and jailed in the brig. During her emprisonment, Tigh attempts to forcibly extract information from her by gunpoint. Sharon's human and Cylon personalities appear to stonewall him (Scattered). Chief Tyrol is later thrown in the same brig cell by Col. Tigh, also suspected of being a Cylon. While imprisoned together, Boomer tries to convince Tyrol that her feelings for him were real and important, but he rejects her and threatens to kill her if she touched him.

Dr. Gaius Baltar later enters the cell, austensibly to collect a blood sample from Tyrol to prove his innocence using the Cylon detector, but instead Baltar injects Tyrol with a potent toxin that would kill him in a matter of seconds if Baltar doesn't give him an antidote. Baltar interrogates Sharon, demanding to know how many other Cylons were in the Fleet, using the dying Tyrol to blackmail her. Boomer, near hysterics, protests that she didn't know. Baltar insists that somewhere in her subconscious mind, underneath all of her programming and false memories, she truly does know and with a stressful enough stimulus, the information would come forward. At the last second, she cries out that there were eight other Cylons in the Fleet. Baltar revives Tyrol.

Soon after, while being transferred to a new reinforced cell in the brig built to hold Cylons for later experiments, a large crowd of crewmembers jeers at her and calls her a traitor. An enraged Cally breaks through the crowd holding a gun and shoots Boomer at point blank range. Dying in Tyrol's arms, her last words were "I love you, Chief" (Resistance).

Boomer's body is sent to the morgue, and autopsied. The recovered Commander Adama visits her corpse, asking "Why?" aloud, and weeps over her body. Commander Adama gives Cally a slap on the wrist by sentencing her to only 30 days in the brig for discharging a weapon without authorization. Cally is never tried for murder since Boomer wasn't human (The Farm).

A New Beginning

However, Boomer's consciousness does not die. When Cally shoots "Boomer" Valerii, Galactica is close enough to the then-unknown Cylon Resurrection Ship so that her consciousness is retrieved for download into another body. Her resurrection occurs in the Caprica city of Delphi (Downloaded). On rebirth, Boomer rejects her Cylon nature and continues to call herself "Sharon" instead of "Eight," even going so far as to reclaim her former apartment. A copy of Number Three, representing the status quo of the Cylons, is deeply disturbed by this, going so far as to suggest that Sharon be "boxed."

Another "Hero of the Cylon", Caprica-Six, protests vehemently, and Three advises her to get Sharon to change. When Sharon laments the loss of Tyrol, Six tells Sharon of her own love for Baltar, which prompts Sharon to inform her that Baltar is still alive. Realizing that Three has an ulterior motive, the two play along. After a Resistance bombing, Three, Sharon and Six are trapped in a garage with Samuel Anders. Listening to the dry conversation, Six suddenly reveals the truth: "Sharon" and "Caprica" are celebrities in a culture of unity, and, through their love for human individuals, have realized the true horror of the Cylons' actions. Using their celebrity status, they could therefore convince a large portion of the rest of Cylon society of their new belief that the Cylon genocide of humanity was wrong.

Boomer stops Anders from killing Three, and is shell-shocked when Six smashes Three's skull. After telling Anders to escape, Six begs Sharon to help her reveal the truth of the genocide to the other Cylons. Sharon eventually agrees, and a new path is forged (Downloaded).

A year later, Boomer is one of the leaders of the Cylon force occupying New Caprica, along with Caprica-Six and a Number Five. (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II).

Caprica copy

When Helo is left on Caprica, the Cylons use him in an elaborate experiment. Key to this experiment is another copy of Valerii, with copies of Aaron Doral and Six acting as overseers for the experiment. This second Valerii "rescues" Helo from capture by Six and Cylon Centurions. Unaware of Valerii's true nature, Helo genuinely believes this Valerii copy to be the "Boomer" he knew from Galactica. Following his rescue, Valerii leads Helo to "her" Raptor, now in the hands of Cylons, convincing him that they have no direct way off of the planet (Water).

Following this, and having received a "Colonial signal" on the radio receiver they are carrying, she leads Helo to a city where they find a fully-equipped "fallout shelter" in which two people can live in reasonable security, hidden from above-ground Cylon operations, and with sufficient supplies to last a considerable period of time (Act of Contrition).

The Experiment

The purpose in establishing this "nest" is to elicit an emotional response in Helo towards Valerii. When this fails, and he continues to express a desire to get off the planet, the Cylons arrange for Valerii to be "captured", determining that if Helo does not seek to rescue her, the experiment has failed, and he must be killed (You Can't Go Home Again).

Following Helo's "rescue" of Valerii, genuine concern and mutual need result in the two having sex (Six Degrees of Separation), an accomplishment she reports to Doral and Six. A new hideout, a cabin in the woods, is being constructed for Helo and Valerii, and she is instructed to lead him there and have him stay with her - or kill him if he attempts to leave (Flesh and Bone).

Faced with this, and the realization that she has herself fallen in love with Helo, Valerii disobeys her instructions and attempts to lead Helo to Delphi, where they hope to steal a vehicle and get off the planet (Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down). On the way to the spaceport, Valerii shows signs of being pregnant: she succumbs to a bout of morning sickness (The Hand of God) and develops a ravenous appetite (Colonial Day).

Helo's Discovery

On reaching Delphi, Valerii and Helo break into the Cylon facilities to reach the spaceport. When Helo encounters yet another copy of Valerii, he draws the initial conclusion that she is a human clone created by the Cylons, and goes on the run alone (Colonial Day). When Valerii catches up with him, her emotional condition is so confused that she challenges him to shoot her (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I). Helo is only able to wound her, and takes her with him to use her to somehow get off Caprica. While Helo keeps her at gunpoint, she leads him to the Delphi Museum. Waiting out a storm in a nearby ruined building, Sharon tells Helo that her love for him is real and that she is pregnant with his child.

When she and Helo come across kara, who lands near the museum to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo, Thrace realizes instantly that Valerii is a Cylon and attempts to shoot her. Helo stops Thrace and reveals to her that Valerii is pregnant (Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part II). kara is convinced that Caprica-Valerii must be a Cylon copy of the "real" Sharon on Galactica. Caprica-Valerii tries to convince her that they are both Cylons and both of them is just as "real" as the other, by remembering the first time they met, to no avail.

Valerii and The Resistance

After Thrace attempts to kill her, Valerii escapes in Thrace's Cylon Raider to save the life of her unborn child (Scattered). After tracking them for several days, Valerii returns to Helo and a Caprica resistance movement to aid them in finding the missing Thrace (The Farm). Valerii steals a Cylon Heavy Raider and arrives at the rescue scene to destroy several Centurions and rescue the entire resistance group. Convinced that this Sharon copy can be sufficiently trusted, or at least give useful information on Cylon activity, they allow Valerii to join them as they take the Heavy Raider back to the Fleet.

When Valerii walks aboard the Astral Queen, Lee Adama spots her, grabs Valerii and places his gun to her head, obviously angry that another Valerii copy exists (the Galactica copy having shot his father, William Adama). Helo immediately places his gun against Adama's head, but President Roslin urges both men enough to drop their weapons, and orders Valerii to be ejected out the airlock. Valerii pleads for her life, telling Roslin she knows the precise location of the faction's objective: The Tomb of Athena. Roslin reconsiders and places Valerii in the brig. Roslin later confirms that the Cylon is actually working on their side because Valerii wants her child and Helo to remain safe from what Roslin interprets as a mothering instinct.

Valerii accompanies Roslin's party to Kobol. Valerii recites the specific passages of the Tomb in the scriptures of the Sacred Scrolls and plots the group's path along a ridge nearby. As priestess Elosha examines a gravestone marker along the ancient trail, the handcuffed Valerii senses danger but is too late to warn anyone; two "Bouncing Betty"-style antipersonnel mines detonate, killing Elosha. At the same instant, a group of Centurions open fire. As others hide or return fire, Valerii vaults away, with Lee Adama in pursuit, believing she is trying to escape. Valerii scoops up a grenade launcher lying ahead, and just as Lee Adama thinks she is about to shoot him, she aims for the last Centurion and destroys it (Home, Part I). At camp, Adama and Thrace are perplexed that Helo still loves Valerii, even though he is now aware she is a cylon.

While walking, Valerii casually tells Helo that their child is a girl. Commander Adama's search party arrives at Roslin's camp. The warm reunion of the two leaders and family is interrupted when Adama sees this second copy of Sharon Valerii. Commander Adama immediately tries to choke her to death. He releases her after experiencing terrible chest pains (probably the result of his recent surgery, or from anxiety), as she says "And you asked 'why'?" (mysteriously referencing what Commander Adama said over the body of the dead body of "Boomer" Valerii).

Tom Zarek's follower, Meier, tries to convince her to help him kill both Adamas. Valerii believed her Galactica counterpart was being held in the brig, but Meier informs her that she was killed. She expresses her outrage to Helo that Cally killed Boomer with only a minor punishment. Valerii deduces that the Colonials don't see humanoid Cylons are people; she is a thing they may destroy once they no longer need her. Valerii pretends to take up Meier's proposal to kill Commander Adama and Lee Adama, but after they all draw their weapons, she shoots Meier instead, saving the lives of both Adamas. She announces to Commander Adama that she is not the same Sharon that shot him, and that she is not a sleeper agent with hidden protocols waiting to activate; she makes her own choices. She surrenders the weapon to Commander Adama, to everyone's surprise.

The Cooperative Cylon

Subsequently, Valerii is brought aboard battlestar Galactica and imprisoned in a new reinforced cell designed to incarcerate the copy of Sharon known as "Boomer." Number Six tells Dr. Baltar that Valerii's baby will be born in that cell. Number Six considers Valerii's and Helo's biological child to be hers; she says that she will be its "mother" and Baltar will be it's "father" (Home, Part II).

While in her cell Valerii nearly has a miscarriage, and is rushed to Sickbay where Dr. Cottle succeeds in saving the fetus. D'anna Biers, a reporter for the Fleet News Service, stumbles upon Valerii while filming her documentary in Sickbay. D'anna threatens to expose that Adama is harboring a Cylon aboard Galactica, but he confiscated what he believed was Biers' tape of Valerii. In reality, D'anna secretly switches tapes and keeps the real one. This critical information was not broadcast in the final cut of her documentary distributed to the Fleet, but it was broadcast back to other Cylons on Caprica (by way of two Raiders that attacked Galactica in order to get within transmission range). The Cylons on Caprica (including another copy of D'anna and yet another Valerii copy) are surprised yet overjoyed that Helo's Valerii is still alive (they are apparently unaware that she had survived). They are incredibly concerned that her hybrid child survives, saying that it must be protected at all costs (Final Cut).

When Galactica experiences mysterious computer failures and system malfunctions from yet another Cylon virus, Commander Adama orders Helo to show the incarcerated Valerii the strange Cylon code. Valerii identifies it as a very virulent Logic bomb that will take control of the ship and kill off the crew if she does not help. Reluctantly, on advice from President Roslin, Commander Adama brings Valerii to CIC, where Valerii cuts her arm open and connects her body to a fiber optic line to communicate with Galactica's mainframe computer and communication channels. The process is painful both to Valerii and to the crew watching the spectacle. With Valerii now with access, she takes into her a portion of the logic bomb code, then instructs Lieutenant Gaeta to wipe the hard drives of the system computers to erase all Cylon virus traces for good. Galactica is a sitting duck to a massive Cylon fighter force on the outskirts of DRADIS range while Valerii makes adjustments to the code. She resends the code out on the communication channels to the Cylon fleet. In a reversal of the events suffered by the Colonials in the holocaust, every Cylon fighter loses power and weapons. Adama's Vipers have a free-for-all shooting, destroying every Cylon fighter without a single Colonial casualty (Flight of the Phoenix).

The Cylon "Interrogator"

After Galactica reunites with battlestar Pegasus, Admiral Helena Cain sends Lieutenant Alistair Thorne to inspect the incarcerated Valerii. He beats her and attempts to sexually assault her while his guards watch. Fortunately for Valerii, both Helo and Tyrol find out about Thorne and what was done to his previous prisoner and arrive in time to stop him. Tyrol accidentally kills Thorne in the process, and both he and Helo are arrested by the Pegasus guards and taken to Cain's battlestar, where a summary court-martial leaves Agathon and Tyrol pending execution by Admiral Cain.

Commander Adama sends a Marine force and his Viper squadrons out and tells to Cain over wireless that he is getting his men. Valerii and all of the fleet await news on the survival of her "past" and current love as a standoff between the battlestars begins (Pegasus).

Valerii's attempted rape results in a hairline fracture in one of her ribs and minor bruising. Still in shock for the incident, Commander Adama personally appologizes to Valerii that it happened aboard his ship (Resurrection Ship, Part I). This is also the first time where he refers to Sharon as a 'her', as opposed to as an 'it'.

Valerii is happily reunited with Helo and Tyrol when the two are released after Adama resumes full command of the Fleet, though she is more enthusiastic to see Helo than Tyrol. (Resurrection Ship, Part II).

Roslin's attempt to abort Valerii's baby

Weeks later, President Roslin, on her deathbed, recommends that Valerii's fetus be aborted, fearing dire consequences for the Fleet.

On hearing this news, Helo is terrified, but Valerii, having cooperated fully to aid the Fleet to save herself and her child and to show that not all Cylons are dangerous, is enraged. Marines sent to inspect her and later to take her to sickbay for the procedure are forced to restrain the angry Cylon.

At the last minute (spurred by threats from his virtual Number Six), it is Gaius Baltar who learns of an astonishing ability of the fetal blood of Valerii's baby: it destroys cancer cells. Taking a small blood sample, he injects it into the dying Laura Roslin. Moments later, her cancer is "gone", according to Dr. Cottle. The abortion procedure is cancelled.

The recovering Roslin visits Valerii in her cell and smiles at the sight of Valerii stroking her belly, just as a human female would (Epiphanies).

Birth of the child

Caprica-Sharon has since given birth to the child which was born prematurely, and thus its lungs were underdeveloped and it had to spend some time in an oxygen-rich incubator. An emergency Ceasarian Section had to be performed by Dr. Cottle to save both the baby's and Caprica-Sharon's life because of a detached placenta. Helo and Sharon named the baby Hera and marveled at her while she was in an incubator. However, after believing their baby was out of danger, the baby apparently died due to her underdeveloped lungs and the failure of Dr. Cottle to be able to intubate her in time. In a state of shock Sharon nearly strangled Cottle in grief before being subdued, and subsequently fell into deep depression.

However, unbeknownst to Caprica-Sharon, her baby is still alive. In a move to not have to kill the baby but at the same time not have it raised by Sharon or risk having it captured by unseen Cylon agents, Caprica Sharon's baby was switched with another dead child. That was the child Sharon and Helo was grieving over. President Laura Roslin, Dr. Cottle and Presidental aide Tory Foster had Caprica-Sharon's baby placed in the care of Maya, a foster mother for Hera who had lost her own child. The adoptive mother does not know that the child she has taken in is the Cylon/human hybrid. (Downloaded)

Sharon's depression over losing her child only worsens. Helo convinces her to aid in the rescue of Anders and the other survivors on Caprica, in part to try and draw her out of her funk. Sharon makes the rescue possible by acting as a conduit between the Colonial Raptors and the far more advanced FTL computer salvaged from a Heavy Raider. (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I) On Caprica, kara demonstrates a new level of trust for Sharon by throwing her a gun during the firefight with the Centurions. Later, Sharon is as perplexed as everyone else when the Cylon troops disengage and the Cylons apparently leave the planet for good. She is aware, however, that Brother Cavil, who loudly proclaims the end of the occupation to be a miracle, is a Cylon agent, and witholds this information from the others. On Galactica the good brother is exposed by Chief Tyrol, and Sharon is sent back to the Brig along with him. When asked by a distraught Helo why she didn't report this crucial fact, she replies "They killed my baby. Do you think I care about you, or us, or whether or not Adama trusts me anymore?" and then shuts him out completely. Her status and whereabouts during the year on New Caprica are currently unknown. (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II)