Kyra Sedgwick

As the '90s approached, Sedgwick gained big-screen attention with a supporting role in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989). In 1992, she notably had the chance to embrace her Jewish side -- as a person who'd openly spoken about her mixed ethnic identity -- with a role in Miss Rose White, starring as a Polish-born woman sent to New York as a child to escape the Holocaust, but who is forced to confront the Jewish heritage she's since denied when she finds that the sister she was separated from is still alive.

That same year, Sedgwick scored the "big break" part that she would long be remembered for when Cameron Crowe cast her as the female lead in his film Singles. A sweet and funny generational opus about life and love after college, the dramedy was filmed on location in Seattle in 1991, just as the grunge music movement was beginning to take off. In addition to supporting cast members like Matt Dillon and Bridget Fonda, the film featured artists like Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell in minor roles as musicians. Sedgwick's placement in a movie that would prove to be so iconic for its time and place endeared her greatly to Gen-Xers, though she would lie low throughout the '90s and 2000s, frequently choosing smaller, independent projects.

In 2004, Sedgwick and husband Kevin Bacon undertook a joint project, The Woodsman, which Bacon also produced. Still more daunting for the spouses than the notoriously stressful task of working together, the film cast Bacon as a paroled pedophile, examining the character's recovery and the tentative relationship that he forms with a somewhat emotionally hardened fellow lumberyard worker, played by Sedgwick. While hardly blockbuster subject matter, the project was praised by critics, as was Sedgwick's intimate, minimalist performance.

It seemed clear that Sedgwick's interests as an actor lay outside the harshest glare of the Hollywood limelight, but in 2006 she managed to stumble into its illumination anyway, starring in the TNT drama The Closer. Playing a Southern-born police detective with an uncanny skill for extracting confessions, Sedgwick brought a multi-dimensional quality to the character of Brenda Johnson that made the series considerably more well-rounded than the other procedural crime shows that flooded prime time. The complex nature of the role earned her immense praise, as in a singe episode, Brenda could share the screen with her arrogant co-workers, her flirtatious beau, her beloved but nagging mother, and several criminal suspects that she might persuade to confess through any number of personal approaches. Audiences were awed at the genuineness with which Sedgwick was able to portray a character who is so frequently choosing her words and actions with careful precision, and the series was picked up for a second season in 2007. That same year, Sedgwick took home a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Drama. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide