When she took her on-camera bow in the early 2000s, Brazilian-born actress Morena Baccarin maintained equal footing in the film and television arenas, typically filling parts that called for an exotic ingenue with an undercurrent of raw intelligence. Baccarin’s regular small-screen role on the 2002 sci-fi-Western hybrid series Firefly — as Inara, a “companion” (a well-respected courtesan) onboard a futuristic spaceship — yielded an assignment to reprise that characterization in the big-screen adaptation of that series, Serenity (2005). She continued to find steady work on the small screen with recurring roles in the reboot of ABC’s sci-fi series V, as well as in the award-winning spy series Homeland.
