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Sarah Jessica Parker (born March 25,
1965), is a Golden Globe and Emmy-winning American
actress and an Emmy-winning producer, with a portfolio
of television, movie, and theatre performances. She is
best known for her role as Carrie Bradshaw, a newspaper
journalist, on the HBO television series Sex and the
City.
Early life and career: Parker was born in
Nelsonville, Ohio, to Stephen Parker, a Jewish American
businessman, and Barbara, who may also have Jewish
ancestry. Her parents divorced early on in Parker's life
and her mother remarried Paul Forste, who was 19. Parker
grew up with her mother, stepfather and seven siblings.
As a young girl, she trained in singing and ballet, soon
being cast in the Broadway production of The Innocents.
Her family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio,
and then to Dobbs Ferry, New York, near New York City,
where Parker was developing her career as a child
actress. In 1977, the family moved to the newly opened
planned community on Roosevelt Island, in the East River
between Manhattan and Queens, and later to Manhattan
proper; her parents later moved to Englewood, New Jersey
where she attended Dwight Morrow High School.
Parker attended the School for Creative and Performing
Arts, the School of American Ballet and the Professional
Children's School, and later Dwight Morrow High School.
She and four siblings appeared in a revival of The Sound
of Music, and Parker went on to the new 1977-81 Broadway
musical Annie — first in the small role of
"July," and then succeeding Andrea McArdle and
Shelley Bruce in the lead role as the plucky
Depression-era orphan, for a year beginning March 6,
1979.
In 1982, Parker was cast in the co-lead role of the
CBS-TV sitcom Square Pegs. The show lasted only one
season before being cancelled by the network, but
Parker's performance was critically well received. In
the three years that followed, she was cast in four
films - the most significant of those being Footloose in
1984 and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, co-starring Helen
Hunt, in 1985. Also that year, she become romantically
involved with actor Robert Downey Jr., whom she met on
the set of Firstborn and with whom she lived through
1991; during their relationship, Downey Jr. had a drug
problem, and Parker has commented that she thought that
she was "the person holding him together".
Adult career: By the early 1990s, Parker's career
was gaining momentum. In 1991, she appeared in a
supporting role in the romantic comedy, L.A. Story; both
the movie and her performance garnered some positive
reviews. The following year she landed an important
starring role in the well-received film, Honeymoon in
Vegas, co-starring Nicolas Cage. Her 1993 role in the
film Hocus Pocus was a higher grosser at the box office
but received negative reviews. She next appeared
opposite Johnny Depp in the critically acclaimed movie
Ed Wood. The film Miami Rhapsody, in 1995, saw her back
on familiar territory with more romantic comedy material
and a leading role. She appeared in another Tim
Burton-directed movie, Mars Attacks!, The First Wives
Club, and The Substance of Fire, in which she reprised
her 1991 stage role, in 1996.
In 1997, she appeared as Francesca Lanfield, a washed-up
Maureen McCormick-esque former child actress in the
comedy Til There Was You. Later that year, the script
for an HBO drama/comedy series titled Sex and the City
was sent to Parker and the show's creator Darren Star
was determined that she be cast in his project. Despite
some early doubts about being cast in a long-term
television series, Parker agreed to star.
The first season of the show proved to be an instant
success, elevating Parker to a higher status. Despite
the show's increasingly raunchy storylines, Parker
retained the strict no-nudity clause of her contract
throughout the show's six-season run. Parker became a
producer for the show starting with its third season. In
2004, Parker won an Emmy award for her lead role (after
five consecutive losses). Many gambling and betting
establishments stopped taking bets on her Emmy victory,
because it was so widely predicted that she would win.
Parker has since stated that she will "never do a
television show again", although she will
co-executive produce a new HBO series based on
Washingtonienne, but will not star in it.
After Sex and the City ended in 2004, rumours of a film
version circulated and it has since been revealed that a
script had been completed for such a project. However,
Parker has commented that it will likely never be made.
Two years later, however, preparations were already
underway and HBO is currently in negotiations with
executive producer Michael Patrick King and the cast
from the Sex and the City TV series, including Parker,
to produce a feature film of the same name. In addition
to work in movies and television, she is also a
respected stage actor, having appeared in well-reviewed
lead roles in the off-Broadway play Sylvia, alongside
husband Matthew Broderick in How to Succeed in Business
Without Really Trying, and the Tony Award-nominated Once
Upon A Mattress, as Princess Winifred the Woebegone.
In December 2005, Parker appeared in her first
theatrical film in several years, The Family Stone; she
received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress -
Comedy for the role. Her next film, the romantic comedy
Failure to Launch, co-starring Matthew McConaughey, was
released on March 10, 2006 and opened at #1 in the North
American box office, grossing slightly over $24 million,
despite mediocre reviews. Parker's work as a producer
continues with the independent film Spinning Into
Butter, based on the Rebecca Gilman play scheduled for a
2006 release, which she will also star in. Her latest
confirmed project is Slammer, a prison-themed musical
comedy to be directed by Adam Shankman and released in
2007. The role as imprisoned publicist who stages an
all-inmate musical will give Parker the opportunity to
revisit her musical roots, which have yet to be explored
in her film and television work.
Personal style: Parker has become very
influential in the world of fashion; she is considered
one of the more stylish celebrities and has been
recognized as "Best Dressed" in certain
magazines. In 2000, she hosted the MTV Movie Awards and
appeared in no fewer than 15 different costumes
throughout the show.
She has also become the face of many of the world's
biggest fashion brands through her work in a variety of
advertising campaigns. In August 2003, Parker signed a
highly lucrative deal with Garnier to appear in
television and print advertising promoting their
Nutrisse hair products. In 2004, she fronted an
international campaign by Gap but her contract with the
clothing giant was suddenly terminated in Spring of 2005
in favour of British soul singer Joss Stone.
A friend of Parker commented to the
press that "Sarah's spring campaign for GAP has
only just started and she feels the announcement of her
replacement in the same week that the new ads are
appearing is a bit of a snub" . In addition to her
advertising work, Parker released her own fragrance in
2005 called "Lovely" - an innocent parody in
itself. In March 2007 Sarah Jessica Parker announced
that she is launching her own fashion line, Bitten, in
partnership with discount clothing chain Steve &
Barry's. The line, which will feature hundreds of
clothing items and accessories under $20, will be
launching on June 7th, 2007.
Personal life: As her career continued to blossom
into the 1990s, she met journalist John Kennedy Jr. and
dated him for several months. Prior to this, Parker had
a serious relationship with Robert Downey Jr. She was
also romantically linked to singer-songwriter Joshua
Kadison in the early 90s, who described their tumultuous
relationship and their cat Moses in the song
"Jessie" on the album Painted Desert Serenade.
On May 19, 1997, she married actor Matthew Broderick, to
whom she was introduced by her brother. The couple
married in a civil ceremony in a historic synagogue on
the Lower East Side of Manhattan that is no longer used
as a house of worship; both Parker and Broderick have
Jewish ancestry and consider themselves to be
"culturally Jewish." The couple's first child,
son James Wilke Broderick, was born on October 28, 2002.
He was named after Broderick's father, the distinguished
Irish-American actor James Broderick.
Parker and Broderick spend a considerable amount of time
at their holiday home in County Donegal, Ireland. Parker
is a prominent member of the Hollywood's Women's
Political Committee and is UNICEF's Representative for
the Performing Arts; in 2006, she traveled to Liberia as
a UNICEF celebrity ambassador, and has commented that,
"It's a place that gets little or no attention, so
we're going to try and bring some attention to it."
As of 2007, she lives in New York City with her husband
and son. |
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