Acting career Thompson began her career as a voiceover artist, which continues today. Her first significant film role was in the 1987 film
Wall Street. In 1989, she was cast on the
soap opera Falcon Crest as the scheming
Genele Ericson during the show's final season, and played photojournalist Maggie Dawson in the Season 3, Episode 2 of the series
Quantum Leap. In 1991, she played Nurse Helen Caldwell in the comedy film
Delirious. In 1993 she was cast on the
science fiction television series
Babylon 5 as
telepath Talia Winters. Thompson left the series in the middle of its second season. Thompson moved on to join the cast of
JAG midseason as
Commander Alison Krennick, an aide to the
Judge Advocate General of the Navy and direct supervisor of
Harmon Rabb. She was among several actors who left the show when it was canceled by
NBC after one season before
CBS picked it up. She then went on to play Detective Jill Kirkendall on four seasons of crime drama
NYPD Blue, leaving in April 2000 to pursue a career in journalism.
Journalism career Thompson started to prepare for her journalism career in 1999, by earning her
GED and working for one year with Jack Hubbard, associate director of
Stanford University's News Service and a veteran journalist of
CBS News. During this time, she also took a writing seminar with
KGO-TV's feature reporter
Wayne Freedman. She began her work with
CBS affiliate
KRQE in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, as a general assignment reporter for $26,000 per year. Thompson joined
CNN Headline News as an evening anchor in June 2001. CNN had
laid off 400 of 4,000 employees in January, and was refocusing on personalities to draw in younger viewers. Her hiring generated controversy in journalism circles, mostly because Thompson had just one year of journalism experience.
Nude pictures and videoclips of Thompson taken from her 1980s-era movies also began circulating on the
Internet, causing some embarrassment for CNN. Thompson left the network in March 2002. During an appearance in January 2003, she made a statement indicating she left CNN because she disagreed with the way the news was handled, "Basically... you just give the viewers enough to scare the hell out of them, and not any real valuable information. And we saw so much of that after Sept. 11 that I thought was, frankly, irresponsible." After leaving CNN, she went to work for
Court TV, introducing episodes of
NYPD Blue and
Forensic Files, as well as narrating the documentary series
The System. She began hosting
Psychic Detectives in 2003.
Return to acting Thompson had a recurring guest role as Doctor Nicole Duncan on the third season of the television series
24, first appearing on that show in November 2003. In 2007, she appeared in season two of
Bones in the episode "Spaceman in a Crater". In 2009, she played Field Agent Anne Hudson in "Outfoxed", a season five episode of the series
Criminal Minds. ==Personal life==