NCIS: Who Plays Carla Marino?

Contains spoilers for "NCIS" Season 22, Episode 20 — "Nexus"

Cary Cole's Alden Parker has been doing something of a pas de deux with a Kansas City mob boss named Carla Marino during Season 22 of "NCIS." They have a long, ugly history together: Alden was the one who gave her teenage son, Jason, enough information about the family's criminal empire to make him run away in disgust with his girlfriend, April Day (Brianna Brown). The teens wound up in a motorcycle crash which killed Jason and led to April going into hiding, changing her name to Melinda, and giving birth to Carla's granddaughter, Lauren, in secret. Carla wants what's left of her family back — and she's still angry about what happened to Jason.

The Season 22 finale "Nexus" provides Carla with a major opportunity for payback when she and Alden team up to take down the head of the titular criminal organization, known as The Butcher. Unfortunately for Alden, some nasty surprises are waiting for him. It turns out Carla is actually the one running Nexus and The Butcher is a made-up figure she used as a smokescreen. She openly blames Alden for Jason's death — and claims revenge by killing Alden's father, Roman (Francis Xavier McCarthy), with a point-blank gunshot blast to the chest.

This big death in the Season 22 finale sets up the next season of "NCIS" nicely. Carla is proving to be quite the foe, and the actress behind the character is just as formidable: Rebecca De Mornay. But who is she, exactly? She became well-known for playing a vengeful widow in a hit thriller film that led to her being typecast for a while, but her filmography is actually pretty varied. Here's where you may have seen her in action before.

If you went to the movies regularly during the 1980s and 1990s, then you may have found yourself wondering what happened to Rebecca De Mornay, because she was a regular face on the big screen back then. Her most notable credits from that period include "Risky Business," in which she played gold-hearted call girl Lana; "The Slugger's Wife," in which she played wannabe actress Debby Palmer, "And God Created Woman," in which she plays part-time rocker and full-time parolee Robin Shea; and the firefighting drama "Backdraft," in which she plays loving wife Helen McCaffrey.

De Mornay is probably best-known as the vengeful Peyton Flanders, who responds to being widowed and losing her child by making herself over into the perfect nanny and attaching herself to the family of one of her husband's assault victims in "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle." It was such a big hit that De Mornay found herself typecast for a period, appearing in erotic thrillers like "Never Talk to Strangers" and "Table for One," with her role as Milady in the 1993 adaptation of "The Three Musketeers" providing some variety.

The Santa Rosa native co-starred as Wendy Torrance in the TV adaptation of "The Shining" and recurred on "ER" as recovering patient Elaine Nichols toward the end of the '90s, which helped her break free of the thriller mold. In the 2000s, she scored supporting roles in films like the family musical "Raise Your Voice," the skateboarding drama "Lords of Dogtown," and the cult comedy "Wedding Crashers." More recently, she played the mother of the titular character in the Marvel series "Jessica Jones" and Penelope Decker in "Lucifer" — here's what happened to the rest of the "Lucifer" cast.