Madison Eginton

Christmas played a key role in Madison Eginton's early acting career. In the 1994 sci-fi saga, "Star Trek: Generations," she had one line ("We love you, father.") during the Christmas sequence in which Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) meets his family in an alternative timeline within the Nexus. Amusingly, just as she played Madison, her fellow siblings were also named after the youngsters essaying them: Matthew and Mimi Collins, Thomas Decker, and Olivia Hack. Five years later, the festivities again loomed large, as Helena Harford persuaded parents Bill and Alice (Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman) to let her stay up late to watch "The Nutcracker" on television in the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick's final feature, "Eyes Wide Shut." Eginton also played in the toy section during the poignant department store denouement. But, besides an uncredited bit as the young Lauren Ambrose in the 2000 horror spoof "Psycho Beach Party," she had to be content with small-screen roles in shows like "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," "Boy Meets World" and "ER" before taking the lead in Jonathan Messer's 2002 short, "Joshua Tree," in which her neglected teenager learns about life's mysteries from widowed scientist neighbor Rebecca Klinger. Eginton's brother Zachary also took juvenile roles in this period, but, while he went on to become a camera operator, his sister took a seven-year sabbatical to complete her education before returning in an episode of "Everybody Hates Chris" and playing a high school murder victim's friend in the macabre 2010 thriller "Death and Cremation."