Parenting & Family Quote by Jeri Ryan

“I was always a fan of horror films as a kid” reads like a small confession, the kind celebrities toss off in interviews, but it carries a neat cultural payload. Jeri Ryan isn’t name-dropping a genre to sound edgy; she’s sketching an origin story that quietly reframes her public image. Horror fandom, especially for a girl growing up in the late ’70s and ’80s, signals a willingness to lean into fear rather than be protected from it. The subtext isn’t “I like scary movies.” It’s “I learned early to enjoy discomfort, suspense, and the thrill of control inside something uncontrollable.”

That matters for an actress whose most iconic role (Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager) trades in body anxiety, transformation, and the tension between autonomy and violation - all central horror themes. Even when the material isn’t literal horror, that sensibility translates: you understand how to play a scene where the audience anticipates the worst, where the real drama is what’s held back, not what’s shown.

There’s also a generational context: pre-streaming horror was often a forbidden fruit, accessed through VHS rentals, late-night cable, older siblings. Saying she “was always a fan” implies durability, not a phase - a taste formed before branding, before fandom became a curated identity. It positions her as someone who didn’t just stumble into genre work; she grew up fluent in it. In a culture that still treats “scream queens” as a niche, Ryan’s line quietly argues that horror is training.