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.
