Jennifer Beals

Jennifer Beals (born December 19, 1963)<ref name=biography.com>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> is an American-Canadian actress. She made her film debut in My Bodyguard (1980), before receiving critical acclaim for her performance as Alexandra Owens in Flashdance (1983), for which she won NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical.

Beals has appeared in several films including Vampire's Kiss (1988), Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), The Last Days of Disco (1998), Roger Dodger (2002), The Book of Eli (2010), Before I Fall (2017), and Luckiest Girl Alive (2022). On television, she starred in shows such as The Chicago Code (2011), Proof (2015), Taken (2017), and The Book of Boba Fett (2021). Her portrayal of Bette Porter on the Showtime drama series The L Word (2004–2009) earned her a nomination for the Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. She reprised her role as Bette Porter and served as an executive producer on the sequel series The L Word: Generation Q (2019–2023).

Early life

Beals was born and raised in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> the daughter of Jeanne (née Anderson), an elementary school teacher, and Alfred Beals, who owned grocery stores.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Beals's father was African-American, and her mother is Irish-American.<ref name= "afterellen1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She has two brothers, Bobby and Gregory.<ref name= tvg>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Her father died when Beals was nine,<ref name= ReadEagle>Template:Cite news</ref> after which she spent a summer at Cheley Colorado Camps in Estes Park, Colorado.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her mother married Edward Cohen<ref name= tvg /> in 1981.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Beals says that her biracial heritage affected her. Of her youth, she says that she "always lived sort of on the outside", with a feeling "of being the other in society".<ref name= "afterellen1"/> Beals's first job was at age 13 at an ice cream store, using her height at the time (later Template:Convert) to convince her boss she was 16 years old.<ref name=ReadEagle/>

Two key moments inspired Beals to pursue a career in acting—working on her high school's production of Fiddler on the Roof, and seeing Balm in Gilead (with Joan Allen) while volunteer-ushering at the Steppenwolf Theatre.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Beals graduated from Francis W. Parker School in Chicago,<ref name="Thomas"/> then participated in Goodman Theatre Young People's Drama Workshop.<ref name= BuckGaz/> She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in American Literature in 1987.<ref name=Yale>Template:Cite news</ref> While at Yale, Beals was a resident of Morse College.<ref name= Yale/> She deferred a term so she could perform in the feature film Flashdance.<ref name= "Thomas">Template:Cite news</ref>

Career

Film

File:Jennifer Beals.jpg

Beals in Sweden during promotion for Flashdance, July 1983.

Beals had a minor role in the 1980 film My Bodyguard,<ref name=Brady>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Dead link</ref> then came to fame with her starring part in Flashdance. The third-highest grossing U.S. film of 1983, Flashdance is the story of 18-year-old Alex, a welder by day and sensual dancer by night, whose dream is to be accepted someday at an illustrious school of dance. Beals was cast for this key role while still a student at Yale. She was nominated for a Golden Globe and the film received an Academy Award for Best Song. Many of Beals's elaborate dance moves were actually performed by dance double Marine Jahan.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Gymnast Sharon Shapiro performed the flips as a body double for actress Beals.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

After she filmed Flashdance, Beals resumed her studies, making only one film during that time: playing the title role in The Bride with singer-actor Sting, a gothic horror film loosely based on the 1935 classic Bride of Frankenstein,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> shot during her summer break.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She also appeared as Cinderella in an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, opposite Matthew Broderick.<ref name=Brady/> Beals was asked by Joel Schumacher to do St. Elmo's Fire but turned it down, preferring to stay at Yale.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

After graduating from Yale in 1987, Beals resumed her acting career, playing the love interest in the boxing film Split Decisions opposite Craig Sheffer.<ref name="Thomas"/> Starring opposite Nicolas Cage, she portrayed a lusty and thirsty vampire in 1989's Vampire's Kiss.

In 1995, Beals and Denzel Washington co-starred in Devil in a Blue Dress, a period film based on a Walter Mosley novel featuring L.A. private detective, Easy Rawlins. Beals plays a biracial woman passing for white. That same year she appeared with Tim Roth in two segments of the four-story anthology Four Rooms, one of which was directed by her then-husband, Alexandre Rockwell.

Rockwell had previously directed her in the 1992 independent film In the Soup, which was a Grand Prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2003, she played one of the sequestered jury members in the film adaptation of Runaway Jury.

She had a leading role in 2006's The Grudge 2, sequel to the hit horror film of two years earlier. In 2010, Beals reunited with Denzel Washington in the post-apocalyptic action drama The Book of Eli, where she played a blind woman who is the mother of Mila Kunis' character and a consort of a local despot played by Gary Oldman.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Beals portrayed UCLA Bruins gymnastics head coach Valorie Kondos Field, in the film Full Out, about Ariana Berlin.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2017, Beals played the role of Samantha Kingston's mother, in the film version of Before I Fall.

In 2019, she played the role of Karen in the romantic film After.

Television

File:Jennifer Beals (41417).jpg

Beals during a panel discussion of In the Soup at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival

In 1992, she appeared in 2000 Malibu Road as attorney Perry Quinn. It was her first television series; she said she had been leery as she previously had not "found a character I wanted to live with for several years".<ref name=BuckGaz>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2004, Beals made a brief cameo in the final episode of Frasier. In 2007, she appeared in the small TV drama My Name Is Sarah, in which she plays Sarah Winston, a sober woman who inadvertently walks in on an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and is mistaken for an alcoholic, but finds herself falling in love with a recovering alcoholic and—as a result—having to deal with her original deception in joining the group.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Beals starred in Showtime's The L Word, wherein she played Bette Porter, a lesbian, Ivy League-educated, art museum director. At Beals's request, Bette was made biracial, enabling Pam Grier's Kit Porter character to become Bette's half-sister.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Beals's initial research for the part focused more on the woman's profession as an art museum director than on her life as a lesbian;<ref>Template:Cite episode</ref> "I was much more obsessed by the work that Bette did, because she was so obsessed by the work that she did."<ref>Template:Cite episode</ref> The series ran for six seasons and ended in March 2009.

She also appears alongside Tim Roth in Lie to Me, as Cal Lightman's ex-wife, Zoe Landau.

Beals was the female lead in Fox's TV drama The Chicago Code. Her character Teresa Colvin is Chicago's first female police superintendent.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The series was canceled after its first season.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Beals turned down an offer to appear on Dancing with the Stars, saying: "I am not a dancer. They asked me and I said 'no.' You could back up a truck to my door filled with cash and I wouldn't do it."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In 2013, Beals signed on for the main role of the ABC drama pilot Westside produced by McG and developed by Ilene Chaiken.<ref name="jbirn">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

On March 10, 2014, it was announced that Beals would star as Dr. Kathryn Russo in Proof, a TNT supernatural medical drama about a hard-nosed surgeon, struggling with the loss of her teenage son, who begins to investigate that there may be life after death. The series ran from June 16 through August 18, 2015, and was produced by Kyra Sedgwick.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

On February 27, 2017, Beals played the leader of a small group of specially trained government operatives for the new series Taken, which serves as a prequel to the Taken film series.

In September 2018, Beals was cast in the role of Sheriff Lucilia Cable for the Swamp Thing series.<ref name="deadline.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In December 2019, Beals reprised her role as Bette Porter in The L Word: Generation Q, the sequel series to The L Word, and also executive-produces the show. She stars alongside fellow The L Word cast members, Katherine Moennig and Leisha Hailey.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In December 2021, Beals appeared in the series premiere of The Book of Boba Fett, a Disney+ series in the Star Wars franchise, where she portrays the Twi'lek Garsa Fwip.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2022, Beals appeared as art gallery owner Cassandra Webb in the NBC series Law & Order: Organized Crime for five episodes.

Web series

Beals is also well known for her support of women's rights. In August 2012, she appeared alongside Troian Bellisario in the web series Lauren on the YouTube channel WIGS.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref> Its first season is a three-episode arc featuring the stories of women in the army being abused, predominantly by more powerful superiors. The stories focused on frequently unreported cases of sexual abuse and how and why most of the cases went unreported or unsettled. Beals has also appeared in two interviews, discussing her views in relation to Lauren.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref>

In January 2013, Troian Bellisario confirmed on her Twitter and Instagram that she and Beals were filming more Lauren web episodes.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref> Lauren returned on May 3, 2013, with a second season of 12 episodes.<ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref><ref>Template:Cite tweet</ref>

Personal life

While attending Yale, Beals dated future film executive Robert Simonds.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> She married Alexandre Rockwell in 1986 and divorced in 1996.<ref name= "afterellen1"/> In 1998, she married Ken Dixon, a Canadian entrepreneur. On October 18, 2005, Beals gave birth to their daughter. Dixon also has two children from a previous marriage.<ref name="Jennifer Beals Has a Baby Girl">Template:Cite news</ref>

Beals has described herself as a spiritual person. She has expressed interest in the Bible and Catholicism, as well as Judaism, to which she once considered converting, and is a practicing Buddhist.<ref>Template:Cite news Alt URL</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref>

She has been a vocal advocate for gay rights, saying, "I think after playing Bette Porter on The L Word for six years I felt like an honorary member of the community."<ref name= WindyCityTimes>Template:Cite news</ref> Beals was a Celebrity Grand Marshal at the 2006 San Francisco Pride Parade.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In October 2012, she received the Human Rights Campaign's Ally For Equality Award, in recognition of her outstanding support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Beals is a practitioner of kung-fu, sanshou, and kickboxing, and is a triathlete.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Beals is a photographer<ref name= tvg /> and has had shows featuring her work under her married name, Dixon.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1989, she spent some time in Haiti photographing the elections.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She published a book about her time on The L Word featuring her own photographs.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2010, Beals served as the Grand Marshal of the McDonald's Thanksgiving Parade in Chicago,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> during which she spoke of the two charities important to her: the Matthew Shepard Foundation and Pablove Foundation.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Beals, who is married to a Canadian, became a Canadian citizen in 2022.<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1980	My Bodyguard	Clifford's Friend
1983	Flashdance	Alexandra Owens
1985	The Bride	Eva
1988	The Gamble	Lady Olivia Candioni
	Split Decisions	Barbara Uribe
	Vampire's Kiss	Rachel
1989	Sons	Transgender
1990	Dr. M	Sonja Vogler
	The Madonna and the Dragon	Patty Meredith	Television film
1991	Blood and Concrete	Mona
1992	In the Soup	Angelica Pena
	Template:Ill	Virginia	Television film
	Indecency	Ellie Shaw	Television film
	Day of Atonement	Joyce Ferranti
1993	Night Owl	Julia	Television film
	The Thief and the Cobbler	Princess Yum-Yum	Voice
	Caro diario	Herself
1994	Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle	Gertrude Benchley
	Dead on Sight	Rebecca Darcy
	The Search for One-eye Jimmy	Ellen
1995	Four Rooms	Angela
	Devil in a Blue Dress	Daphne Monet
	Let It Be Me	Emily Taylor
1997	The Twilight of the Golds	Suzanne Stein	Television film
	Wishful Thinking	Elizabeth
1998	The Prophecy II	Valerie Rosales	Video
	The Spree	Xinia Kelly	Television film
	The Last Days of Disco	Nina Moritz
1999	Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying	Jessica
	Something More	Lisa
	Body and Soul	Gina	Television film
2000	A House Divided	Amanda Dickson	Television film
	Militia	Julie Sanders
2001	The Big House	Lorraine Brewster	Television film
	The Anniversary Party	Gina Taylor
	After the Storm	Mrs. Gavotte	Television film
	Out of Line	Parole Officer Jenny Capitanas
	The Feast of All Saints	Dolly Rose	Television film
2002	13 Moons	Suzi
	Roger Dodger	Sophie
	They Shoot Divas, Don't They?	Sloan McBride	Television film
2003	Without Malice	Samantha Wilkes	Television film
	Runaway Jury	Vanessa Lembeck
2004	Catch That Kid	Molly Phillips
2005	Break a Leg	Juliet
	Desolation Sound	Elizabeth Storey
2006	The Grudge 2	Patricia "Trish" Kimble
	Troubled Waters	Special Agent Jennifer Beck
2007	My Name Is Sarah	Sarah Winston	Television film
2009	Queen to Play	L'Américaine
2010	The Book of Eli	Claudia
	A Night for Dying Tigers	Melanie
	The Night Before the Night Before Christmas	Angela Fox	Television film
2012	Widow Detective	Lainey	Television film
2013	Cinemanovels	Clementine
2014	A Wife's Nightmare	Liz Michaels	Television film
2015	Full Out	Coach Valorie Kondos-Field
	The Laws of the Universe Part 0	Inkar	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref>
2016	Manhattan Night	Lisa Wren
2017	Before I Fall	Mrs. Kingston
2018	The White Orchid	Vivian
2019	After	Karen Scott
2020	Ali's Realm	Principal Dawson	Short
2022	Luckiest Girl Alive	Lolo Vincent
TBA	Hello Out There	Judith	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1985	Faerie Tale Theatre	Cinderella	Episode: "Cinderella"
1992	2000 Malibu Road	Perry Quinn	Main cast
1997	The Outer Limits	Robin Dysart	Episode: "Bodies of Evidence"
1997-98	Nothing Sacred	Justine Madsen Judd	Recurring role
1999	The Hunger	Jane	Episode: "And She Laughed"
2000	E! True Hollywood Story	Herself	Episode: "Flashdance"
	Where Are They Now?	Herself	Episode: "Music Movie Stars"
2004	Frasier	Dr. Anne Ranberg	Episode: "Goodnight, Seattle: Part 1 & 2"
2004-09	The L Word	Bette Porter	Main cast
2007	The Directors	Herself	Episode: "The Films of Adrian Lyne"
	Law & Order	Sofia Archer	Episode: "Charity Case"
2009-10	Lie to Me	Zoe Landau	Recurring cast (seasons 1 and 2)
2011	The Chicago Code	Teresa Colvin	Main cast
2012	Castle	CIA Agent Sophia Turner	2 episodes
2012-13	The Mob Doctor	Celeste LaPree	Recurring cast
	Lauren	Major Jo Stone	Main cast
2014	Motive	Sophia Balfour	Episode: "They Made Me a Criminal"
2015	Proof	Dr. Carolyn "Cat" Tyler	Main cast
2016-17	The Night Shift	Dr. Sydney "Syd" Jennings	Recurring cast (season 3), guest (season 4)
2017	The Last Tycoon	Margo Taft	Recurring cast
2017-18	Taken	Christina Hart	Main cast
2019	Swamp Thing	Lucilia Cable	Main cast
2019-23	The L Word: Generation Q	Bette Porter	Main cast
2021-22	The Book of Boba Fett	Madam Garsa Fwip	Guest cast (3 episodes); Silent cameo (1 episode)
2022	Law & Order: Organized Crime	Cassandra Webb	Recurring cast (season 2)

As producer

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2019	The L Word: Generation Q	Co-executive producer

Awards and nominations

Year	Awards	Category	Recipient	Outcome
1984	NAACP Image Awards	NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture	Flashdance	Template:Won
	Golden Globe Awards	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress		Template:Nom
1996	NAACP Image Awards	NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture	Devil in a Blue Dress	Template:Nom
1998	Satellite Awards	Satellite Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film	The Twilight of the Golds	Template:Won
2001	Satellite Awards	Satellite Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film	A House Divided	Template:Nom
2005	Satellite Awards	Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama	The L Word	Template:Nom
2007	NAACP Image Awards	NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series		Template:Nom
2008	NAACP Image Awards	NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series		Template:Nom

External links

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