Sara Sidle initially lived with her parents and her brother outside of San Francisco. Her father, an ex-hippie, was a violent alcoholic who abused his wife and his children often. But at some point, Sara’s mother couldn’t take it any longer and stabbed her husband.

Sara and her brother subsequently grew up in foster care. This difficult childhood also explains Sara's reclusive life style and very closed manner. She focused all her energy later in her studies of theoretical physics at the Harvard University, the oldest university in the United States.

During her studies, she met Gil Grissom, one of her teachers. After his assistant Holly Gribbs was murdered, Gil Grissom asked Sara Sidle to reinforce his team and come to Vegas.

Sara Sidle (played by Jorja Fox) is a very astute and ambitious detective, whose specialty in the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation material analysis. Similar to her supervisor Gil Grissom, she lives almost exclusively for their profession. She does not seem to have private life, because she remains, like her superior, frequently after closing time in the lab to analyse and explore the evidence.

Sara Sidle leads a very secluded life and is always encouraged by both her colleagues as well as by Grissom to mingle with people and do something. Mostly, this is limited to breakfast together with their teammates in their favorite cafe.

Her ambition and labour input makes her colleagues feel partially pressurized and Sara Sidle is initially not too well-liked because of her goal-oriented way of working, reticence and sometimes rather rude way. She will solve a case by any means, so that she sometimes bends the rules, which also doesn’t ensure an all too close friendship with her colleagues.

Despite her ambition, she does not succeed to achieve a breakthrough in every case. She often also lacks the necessary emotional distance to proceed objectively.

Sara Sidle feels attracted to Gil Grissom, with whom she is friends. He, however, rejects all her advances, which leads to her suffering from a little heartache. This is because he is fifteen years older than Sara Sidle - and also her boss.

In the course of the series it becomes apparent that Sara Sidle has a drinking problem, which is why her boyfriend and her boss advised her to take a break - a proposal she accepts. After this break, she returns to the team and is apparently doing much better.

Nevertheless, it is increasingly obvious that Sara Sidle is both the most emotional and the most labile part of the team.

Technically almost as brilliant as Gil Grissom is the relationship between Sara and her colleague Catherine Willows temporarily marked by tensions and the two women find themselves more frequently together.

As retreated as she may live, she maintains a connection with a case. This involves a victim that almost never left her house and lived mostly of ordered food.

The audience sees Sara Sidle in her home thinking about her own life. Moreover, the viewer sees that the door of her large refrigerator is full of menus from delivery services. Furthermore, various containers of delivered food is to be seen in the trash. At the end of her train of thought she takes off all the menus and throws them away.

She then calls an undetermined person for a talk. Sara Sidle apparently intends to change her life completely.

It is also seen, however, that the stress of their work at the CSI is increasing. After she was kidnapped at the end of the seventh season, the load becomes so great that it in the eighth season, she leaves the team to participate in an expedition in the Costa Rica jungle. From there, she can sometimes be seen in a video message to the audience.

After the murder of her former colleague, Warrick Brown, Sara returns temporarily to Las Vegas, but without officially working for the Las Vegas Crime Lab.

You may find all episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation here.