Jennifer Beals

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, shot during her summer break.

She also appeared as Cinderella in an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, opposite Matthew Broderick.

Beals was asked by Joel Schumacher to do St. Elmo's Fire but turned it down, preferring to stay at Yale.

Jennifer Beals (born December 19, 1963) is an American 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 had a minor role in the 1980 film My Bodyguard, then came to fame with her starring part in Flashdance.

Her mother married Edward Cohen in 1981.

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".

Beals's first job was at age 13 at an ice cream store, using her height at the time (later 5 ft) to convince her boss she was 16 years old.

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.

Beals graduated from Francis W. Parker School in Chicago, then participated in Goodman Theatre Young People's Drama Workshop.

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.

Gymnast Sharon Shapiro performed the flips as a body double for actress Beals.

She graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in American Literature in 1987.

While at Yale, Beals was a resident of Morse College.

She deferred a term so she could perform in the feature film Flashdance.

After graduating from Yale in 1987, Beals resumed her acting career, playing the love interest in the boxing film Split Decisions opposite Craig Sheffer.

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).

Starring opposite Nicolas Cage, she portrayed a lusty and thirsty vampire in 1989's Vampire's Kiss.

Rockwell had previously directed her in the 1992 independent film In the Soup, which was a Grand Prize winner at the Sundance Film Festival.

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.

In 2003, she played one of the sequestered jury members in the film adaptation of Runaway Jury.

She is best known for her portrayal of Bette Porter on the Showtime drama series The L Word (2004–2009), which earned her a nomination for the Satellite Award for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.

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.

Beals portrayed UCLA Bruins gymnastics head coach Valorie Kondos Field, in the film Full Out, about Ariana Berlin.

On television, she starred in shows such as The Chicago Code (2011), Proof (2015), Taken (2017), and The Book of Boba Fett (2021).

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

She reprised her role as Bette Porter and served as an executive producer on the sequel series The L Word: Generation Q (2019–2023).

Beals was born and raised in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Jeanne (née Anderson), an elementary school teacher, and Alfred Beals, who owned grocery stores.

Beals's father was African-American, and her mother is Irish-American.

She has two brothers, Bobby and Gregory.

Her father died when Beals was nine, after which she spent a summer at Cheley Colorado Camps in Estes Park, Colorado.

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