Kirsten Vangsness
By admin On August 21st, 2009
Role : Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia
Gender : Female
Birthday : 7th July 1972
Height : 5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
Recent Role : Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds
Kirsten Vangsness has been a student of Cerritos High School, Cerritos, which is located in California. Besides being an actress, she is also a solo performer and a renowned writer. Los Angeles Times Magazine has published many write ups that have been penned by her.
Kirsten is a homosexual. She is engaged to film Editor Melanie Goldstein, who works on the TV series 24. The two have been in a relationship for almost three years. They plan to get married in Texas, sometime this year. Kirsten has said that they have chosen Texas as the venue of their marriage because Melanie’s parents own a great place there.
At the start of her career Kirsten worked as a substitute teacher, a child counselor, a host in a restaurant, personal assistant and grant writer besides being a theater artist. She has been a very active actress as far as theatre is concerned. She still performs in the Theatre of NOTE in Los Angeles and is a member of the same.
She has earned many awards for her work in theatre. Her list of theatre awards includes the likes of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award for Best Emerging Comic Actress, The Golden Betty Award and the 15 Minutes of Fem Best Actress Award.
Kirsten has been seen on the television prominently in the crime series Criminal Minds, portraying the character of BAU’s Technical Analyst Penelope Garcia. Before she got this role she had appeared in minor roles on Phil of the Future and LAX. In addition to her performance on the television, Kirsten has also worked minor roles in the films Sometimes Santa’s Gotta Get Whacked, A-List, Tranny McGuyver and Scream of the Bikini. Her upcoming movie named, In My Sleep, is currently under the process of post-production.
Role In Criminal Minds
In Criminal Minds, she has portrayed the character of Penelope Garcia. She is the Audio/Visual Technician of the team. She tends to be exceptionally defensive of her computers and the FBI database. She is revealed to have learned computer code as a means of dealing with the loss of her parents who were killed in a car accident and which also made her go into hiding. The FBI considers her to be one of the most dangerous hackers of the world. She landed the job when she was arrested after working as a mercenary hacker for several years, and the FBI offered to wipe out her criminal record and grant her official pardon if she agreed to join them. She loves online games and can run U.S. Central Command sitting in her office even while she is playing online poker.
