Jennifer Beals

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 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). On television, she starred in shows such as The Chicago Code (2011), Proof (2015), Taken (2017), and The Book of Boba Fett (2021). 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 reprised her role as Bette Porter and served as an executive producer on the sequel series The L Word: Generation Q (2019–2023). Early life 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. 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 (she is now ) 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.