Summer Glau
Best known since Firefly as the Terminator Cameron on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, plus roles in Dollhouse, Alphas and Arrow.
After the show
Summer Glau’s first TV credit was in Angel in 2002, as a prima ballerina in the season 3 episode “Waiting in the Wings,” which led to her casting as River Tam. She reprised River in the 2005 film Serenity.
She guest starred on The 4400 and The Unit and appeared in the Syfy film Mammoth (2006). From 2008 to 2009 she played Cameron, a reprogrammed Terminator, on Fox’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a role that won her a Saturn Award. She appeared as herself on The Big Bang Theory in 2009.
She returned to Joss Whedon’s work as Bennett Halverson in four episodes of Dollhouse (2009 to 2010), and guest starred on Chuck (2010). In 2011 she played the hacker Orwell on NBC’s The Cape, recurred as Skylar Adams on Syfy’s Alphas, and voiced Kara Zor-El in the animated film Superman/Batman: Apocalypse.
Later roles include guest spots on Grey’s Anatomy and Hawaii Five-0, the recurring villain Isabel Rochev on Arrow (2013 to 2014), the series Sequestered (2014), Alan Tudyk’s web series Con Man and Castle (2015 to 2016), and Miss Jones on Netflix’s Wu Assassins (2019). In 2021 she narrated the podcast Ctrl Alt Destroy.
Lately
Glau has worked less on screen in recent years, and we could not confirm any new screen roles announced since Wu Assassins.
In March 2026, at a live taping of Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk’s podcast Once We Were Spacemen at Awesome Con in Washington, D.C., Fillion announced that an animated Firefly series is in development with 20th Television Animation. Glau was among the original cast at the announcement and is expected to voice River again. Marc Guggenheim and Tara Butters are attached as showrunners, and the series would be set between the original show and Serenity. No network or platform has been announced as of October 2026.
She continues to meet fans on the convention circuit, including Geek’d Con in Shreveport, Louisiana, in August 2026.
Off screen
Glau trained as a ballet dancer before acting. She married Val Morrison in 2014; the two met on the set of Hawaii Five-0.