Nicollette Sheridan

Nicollette Sheridan was in Knots Landing and then, nearly twenty years later, in Desperate Housewives. Two prime-time soaps a generation apart is a rarer career than a single famous one.

She was born at Worthing, in England, on 21 November 1963 with the Sun on the final degree of Scorpio. A Sun at the very end of a sign reads as that sign used up and inspected rather than simply lived in, and Scorpio at its end is self-possession that has already learned what it costs. Mercury, Venus and Mars then group together in Sagittarius, which is the sign of appetite and the larger horizon, so the chart's whole social apparatus sits one sign further on than the identity does.

Venus is conjunct Mars within a third of a degree. Wanting and pursuing are a single motion for her, and that pairing is magnetism rather than charm: a physical presence that does not need announcing. For an actress whose two famous parts both ran on exactly that, it is not a subtle reading.

The hardest thing in the chart is Jupiter at an awkward angle to Uranus, five minutes of arc from exact, which is growth that arrives disruptively and opportunity that costs stability. Her Moon is in hard contact with the same Uranus. Four planets in fire against one in air gives all of it heat and almost no distance, which in a career of prime-time soap is the correct equipment and a difficult thing to live on.

Two long-running series two decades apart is what Venus conjunct Mars looks like when it is attached to a Scorpio Sun that already knows the terms. The presence did not change and the industry's use for it did, and she was still working when it came back round, which is the part of a television career that nobody plans and everybody needs.