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Parker was born in Nelsonville,
Ohio, the daughter of Barbara, a nursery school operator and teacher, and
Steven Parker, an entrepreneur and journalist. Parker's father, a native
of Brooklyn, was Jewish, the original family surname being "Bar-Kahn"
("son of Kohen"); Parker has said of herself, "I always just considered
myself a Jew". Parker's parents divorced early on in Parker's life and her
mother remarried Paul Forste. 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 properly; 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 canceled 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 became
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".
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. The following year, she 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 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.
Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover of Life, October 1, 2004.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 in its opening weekend, 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. Parker was initially
set to star in Vacancy, along with her co-star from The Family Stone, Luke
Wilson, but she dropped out because she was getting better movie offers.
Kate Beckinsale later won the role.
Parker has become very influential in the world of fashion. 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, Parker announced that she is launching her own
fashion line, Bitten, in partnership with discount clothing chain Steve &
Barry's. The line, which features hundreds of clothing items and
accessories under $20, launched on June 7th, 2007, exclusively at Steve
and Barry's. In July 2007, following the enormous success of "Lovely",
Parker released her second fragrance "Covet".
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 1990s, 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 consider themselves
to be "culturally Jewish." The couple's first child, son James Wilkie
Broderick, was born on October 28, 2002. He was named after Broderick's
father, the distinguished Irish-American actor James Broderick. Given her
public declarations of support for public schools, school choice advocates
are anxious to see if Parker makes good on her 2004 promise to enter James
Wilke into the New York City public school system when he turns five in
2007. Parker and Broderick live in New York City and frequent the arts.
Parker and Broderick also spend a considerable amount of time at their
holiday home in County Donegal, Republic of 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." She is currently a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for the
United States.
As of 2007, she lives in New York City with her husband and son. |
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"Thank you. I've never won
anything in my life." - on winning her 2000 Golden Globe Award for
"Sex and the City" (1998)
I tell my friends married life is boring, but that's just a fun
thing to say to make single people feel better.
"Sarah Jessica is fine, Sarah, SJP, SJ, hey you, anything." [on how
to address her]
The hardest part of leaving the show ["Sex and the City" (1998)] was
this endless gypsy-like life that I'm back into, where it's like
being the new kid in school all the time, which for some people is
very easy but for me is not. I don't really like change, and I would
like everything to be the same constantly, except that I love being
terrified.
Celebrity and the media are reliant on each other - always have been
- but we have lost the elegance in that relationship, somehow.
Fashion is a part of my work. I feel a responsibility to be
presentable, to dress up if the occasion calls for it. But, really,
fashion does not play that big a role in my life these days.
One of the things that's great about New York is that it is not a
one-industry town. It has education, academia, the service industry,
arts, publishing, theater, politics, fashion, finance, as well as
movie-making. There are so many people who are cogs in the great
wheel of the city that a less bright light is shone on our lives. It
still exists - there are always paparazzi at our house - but being a
public person feels less like a business than it does in LA. And you
have to approach it differently. I can't hide behind gates, or in a
car, but if I can get a few yards from my front door, I can still
get lost in a crowd. I am always moments, just moments, from
obscurity on a crowded street in New York.
"I get the feeling people are disappointed with me because I don't
have the answers for them. I have to remind them that I don't have a
Ph.D. in sex or counseling.
Regarding her new Steve & Barry line of affordable conservative
womenswear: "There's not going to be any inappropriate midriff
showing, regardless of your age. I really don't care for it. I feel
like, as a culture, we have seen enough damage done by it. It's
provocative in a way that I just don't feel comfortable with."
As a woman, I have an inherent need to be all things to all people,
to make certain everybody's taken care of. I know I can't sustain
that level all the time, so I'm finding the proper balance and it's
made me infinitely happier. |
