Hardly a flash in the pan, the dark and gorgeous Jennifer Beals has worked steadily since roaring to stardom her freshman year at Yale as the ripped sweatshirt wearing, welder-turned-dancer of the implausible but popular “Flashdance” (1983). Not one to court the Hollywood mainstream, she has yet to match that initial success, but her exotic looks, the result of her mixed racial heritage, have afforded her a diversity of roles. Cast as an 18th Century woman brought back to life by Sting in “The Bride” (1985), she laid a “Vampire’s Kiss” (1988) on Nicolas Cage and traveled abroad to work with European directors like Carlo Vanzini (“La Partita” 1988), Claude Chabrol (“Docteur M.” 1989) and Alexandre Arcady (“Le Grande Pardon II” 1992). She even uncharacteristically fought like hell for the femme fatale role of “The Devil in a Blue Dress” (1995), her biggest role in a major movie since “Flashdance”, only to hear some critics complain of the one-dimensionality of her beguiling turn opposite the film’s star Denzel Washington.
In addition to her foreign oeuvre, Beals has appeared in independent features, notably several for her former husband, director Alexandre Rockwell, beginning with “Sons” (1989) and followed by the 1992 Sundance Grand Jury Prize Winner “In the Soup”, a welcome respite from some of the clinkers she had chosen previously. Radiant and utterly natural as the Dominican-American love interest of an aspiring director (Steve Buscemi), she ably metamorphosed into the foul-mouthed wife kept tied to a chair by her menacing husband in Rockwell’s segment of the unsuccessful anthology film “Four Rooms” (1995). In Alan Rudolph’s take on the infamous wits of the Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle” (1994), Beals gave a convincing portrayal of the neglected wife of humorist Robert Benchley (Campbell Scott). She would reteam with Scott for Eleanor Bergstein’s directing debut, “Let It Be Me” (lensed in 1994; aired on Starz! 1998), which marked her return to dancing (ballroom this time).
Beals’ made her small screen debut as “Cinderella” (1985) for Showtime’s “Faerie Tale Theatre”, and her early TV credits also included a co-starring role with Kate Nelligan in the syndicated thriller “Terror Stalks the Class Reunion” (1992), a leading role on the short-lived series about four female roommates, “2000 Malibu Road” (CBS, 1992), and the part of a woman battling a mysterious entity that lures men to their deaths in the supernatural thriller “Night Owl” (Lifetime, 1993). She distanced herself further from her “Flashdance” image with a mature and believable portrayal of a woman faced with the painful predicament of terminating a pregnancy because her child might be a homosexual in “Twilight of the Golds” (Showtime, 1998), though some reviewers remained unconvinced that there was much beneath the surface. She reteamed with Sam Henry Kass, for whom she had appeared in the indie “The Hunt for One-Eyed Jimmy” (1996), on his remake of “Body and Soul” (TMC, 1999), acting opposite former professional boxer Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini in his first starring role. She also starred opposite Sam Waterston in Showtime’s “A House Divided” (2000) as the daughter of a white slave owner who finds out her mother was black when her father dies. She returned to the big screen again in 2002 as part of the all-star ensemble of Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming’s directorial collaboration “The Anniversary Party” and in a film adaptation of Earnest Hemmingway’s “After the Storm,” playing Mrs. Gravotte. Her next noticable turn was in the critically acclaimed indie film “Roger Dodger” (2002) as one of the female denizens of the New York nightlife who help educate Campbell Scott and his sensitive nephew.
- Born:
on 12/19/63 in Chicago, Illinois
- Job Titles:
Actor, Model
Family
- Brothers: has two
- Father: Black; died c. 1974
- Mother: Caucasian
Significant Others
- Husband: Alexandre Rockwell. married 1986; divorced 1996
Education
- Yale College, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, American literature, 1987
- The Goodman School of Drama at DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois
- Professional Workshop, New York, New York
Milestones
- 1980 Uncredited film debut (bit part) in “My Bodyguard”
- 1983 Made film acting debut in the leading role of the hit musical drama “Flashdance”
- 1985 Played title role in “Cinderella” for Showtime’s “Faerie Tale Theatre”
- 1985 Starred opposite Sting in “The Bride”, Franc Roddam’s revisionist remake of “The Bride of Frankenstein”
- 1988 First foreign film, Carlo Vanzini’s “La Partita”, with Faye Dunaway and Matthew Modine
- 1989 Initial collaboration with then-husband director Alexandre Rockwell, “Sons”
- 1992 Made TV series debut in a shortlived, “2000 Malibu Road” (CBS)
- 1992 Reteamed with Rockwell for “In the Soup”, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival
- 1992 TV-movie debut, Clive Donner’s “Terror Stalks the Class Reunion” (syndicated)
- 1994 Played herself being approached by a rabid fan of “Flashdance” in Nanni Moretti’s “Caro Diario”; Rockwell also appeared as himself
- 1994 Portrayed Gertrude Benchley opposite Campbell Scott as Robert Benchley in Alan Rudolph’s “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle”
- 1995 Acted in Rockwell’s “The Wrong Man” episode of “Four Rooms”, as well as in Quentin Tarrantino’s “The Man from Hollywood” segment
- 1995 Had plum movie role as the femme fatale titular “The Devil in a Blue Dress”
- 1997 Portrayed a young mother who has to decide whether or not to keep her baby, who might be gay, in “Twilight of the Golds” (Showtime), adapted from Jonathan Tolin’s play; project reteamed her with Dunaway; film released theatrically
- 1998 Appeared briefly in Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco”
- 1998 Had recurring role on the ABC drama “Nothing Sacred”; episodes never aired
- 1998 Returned to dancing (ballroom this time) for “Let It Be Me” (Starz!), reteaming with Scott; film was shot in 1994 but never released when Savoy Pictures went bankrupt
- 1999 Starred opposite former boxer Ray ‘Boom Boom’ Mancini in TMC’s “Body and Soul”, Sam Henry Kass’ remake of Robert Rossen’s 1947 film scripted by Abraham Polonsky; had appeared in Kass’ “The Search for One-Eyed Jimmy” (1996), which also featured Mancini
- 2000 Played Amanda Dickinson, the product of a bi-racial coupling in the pre-Civil War South in Showtime’s fact-based drama “A House Divided”
- 2001 Appeared as Mrs. Gravotte in film version of Hemmingway’s “After the Storm”
- 2001 Played a photographer in “The Anniversary Party”
- 2002 Appeared in the independent film “Roger Dodger”
- 2002 Co-starred in the TV miniseries “Anne Rice’s The Feast of All Saints”
- 2003 Appeared with John Cusack in “Runaway Jury,” based on the novel written by John Grisham
- 2004 Starred in the Showtime series “The L Word,” an intimate story about the lives and loves of a group of lesbian friends living in Los Angeles
- Signed to star alongside Karyn Parsons in “13 Moons”, directed by Rockwell
