IT’S FAMOUS FRIDAY!
Jennifer Beals was born on December 19, 1963, and 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).
Beals was born and raised in the South side of Chicago, the daughter of Jeanne (née Anderson), an elementary school teacher, and Alfred Beals, who owned grocery stores Beals’ father was African American, and her mother is Irish American. She has two brothers, Bobby and Gregory.[5] Her father died when Beals was nine.
Beals had a minor role in the 1980 film My Bodyguard, 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.
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,[18] shot during her summer break.[19] She also appeared as Cinderella in an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre, opposite Matthew Broderick.[13] Beals was asked by Joel Schumacher to do St. Elmo’s Fire but turned it down, preferring to stay at Yale.[20]
After graduating from Yale in 1987, Beals resumed her acting career, playing the love interest in the boxing film Split Decisions opposite Craig Sheffer.[10] 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.
While attending Yale, Beals dated future film executive Robert Simonds.[44] She married Alexandre Rockwell in 1986, before divorcing in 1996.[4] 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.
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.