Kate Beckett

Katherine Houghton "Kate" Beckett is a fictional character of the ABC crime series Castle. She is portrayed by Stana Katic.

Overview
Katherine Houghton Beckett was born to Jim and Johanna Beckett and was raised in Manhattan.

Her grandfather was an amateur magician and frequently brought her to the famous Drake's Magic Shop after school in her early teens, resulting in her fascination of the art. She is also a comic book fan, having bought her first when she was 14 and envisioning herself as Elektra if she had a choice of what character to be. She was also raised by her father to be a baseball fan.

Beckett attended to Stuyvesant High School, a public school in New York City reserved for highly gifted students; in "Food to Die For", she becomes reacquainted with her old high school friend, Madison Queller, who stated they shared 9th grade French and expressed her surprise that "the biggest scofflaw at Stuy became a cop". She then studied pre-law at Stanford University, dreaming of becoming the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, before transferring to New York University after her mother's death to pursue a career in law enforcement. Between her junior and senior year of college, she spent a semester studying in Kiev, Ukraine.

Throughout the series, Beckett demonstrates functional knowledge of a broad range of general topics she has studied, to the point of having ready familiarity with and informed opinions on those topics, even in subjects she did not specialize in during her education or subsequent career, such as literature or economics. Castle occasionally remarks that he finds her intelligent and educated and that his character of Nikki Heat was written to reflect these traits.