Kyra Sedgwick plays Brenda Johnson, the homicide cop with a Southern accent and a penchant for cajoling confessions, in the TV series The Closer. Sedgwick has worked steadily as film and theater actress since 1985, when she starred in the movie War and Love and had a guest role on Miami Vice. She gained critical notices for her performance in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989, with Tom Cruise) and had a lead in the popular romantic comedy Singles (1992). She also appeared in Phenomenon (1996, with John Travolta), Secondhand Lions (2003, with Michael Caine) and The Woodsman (2004, with Eve). She began her run in the The Closer (also featuring Anthony Denison, credited as John Denison) in 2005 on the cable channel TNT.
She married actor Kevin Bacon in 1988. They have two children: son Travis (b. 1989) and daughter Sosie (b. 1992)... Sedgwick is a cousin of Edie Sedgwick, who appeared in the experimental films of artist Andy Warhol.
Career Highlights: Miss Rose White, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Singles
First Major Screen Credit: War and Love (1985)
Biography
Actress Kyra Sedgwick was seemingly born into fame, as a cousin of '60s mod icon and muse of Andy WarholEdie Sedgwick. While only 16 when she made her professional acting debut on the TV soap Another World in 1982, Kyra proved much more stable than her ill-fated predecessor, graduating from USC and going on to cultivate a successful acting career on the stage, screen, and television. With high cheekbones, piercing eyes, full lips, and a mane of striking blonde curls, the young actress had no problem landing the film and TV roles to sustain her life as a working actress, but her solid, pensive presence onscreen proved to be an even more useful asset than her looks. Landing at least two substantial parts a year, she built up a resumé over the next decade that included the title role in 1985's Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale and a part in the acclaimed 1987 TV movie Lemon Sky, where she met co-star and future husband Kevin Bacon. The two were married the following year and would have two children.
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
Sedgwick's parents separated when she was three and divorced when she was six; her mother subsequently re-married to Ben Heller, an art dealer.[1][7] Sedgwick graduated from Friends Seminary and attended Sarah Lawrence College.[1] She transferred from Sarah Lawrence to the University of Southern California, graduating with a theater degree.
Sedgwick married Kevin Bacon on September 4, 1988. They have two children, Travis Sedgwick Bacon (born June 23, 1989) and Sosie Ruth Bacon (born March 15, 1992).[11] She is also the aunt of R&B/pop singer, George Nozuka and his younger singer/songwriter brother, Justin Nozuka. Sedgwick identifies her family and herself as Jewish;[12][13] a 1996 interview referred to her as "an all-American Jewish WASP actress", but Sedgwick said in the article that she and her family do not participate in any specific religious activities for any faith except for attending some Passover seders.[14]
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