Nancy Allen

Nancy Allen is an American actress born on June 24, 1950. She gained prominence through her performances in several films directed by Brian De Palma during the 1970s and early 1980s. Her acting career features roles in major feature films such as Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and the RoboCop film trilogy. Over the course of her career, she earned a Golden Globe Award nomination and three Saturn Award nominations.

Allen was born in the Bronx borough of New York City to Florence and Eugene Allen, a police lieutenant, as the youngest of three children. Raised in the Pelham Bay area of the Bronx, she began dance classes at age four. She attended the Academy of Mount St. Ursula before her family relocated to Yonkers. Interested in modern dance, she trained for a year at the High School of Performing Arts before enrolling at Jose Quintano's School for Young Professionals.

Allen made her major film debut as Jack Nicholson's date in Hal Ashby's The Last Detail in 1973, which prompted her to move to Los Angeles. In 1976, she secured the role of Christine Hargensen in Brian De Palma's horror film Carrie. She followed this with roles in Robert Zemeckis's I Wanna Hold Your Hand in 1978 and Steven Spielberg's 1941 in 1979. In 1979, she married De Palma and subsequently appeared in several of his films, including Home Movies in 1980, Dressed to Kill in 1980, and Blow Out in 1981. Her portrayal of Liz Blake in Dressed to Kill earned her a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year.

Following her divorce from De Palma in 1984, Allen appeared in films such as Strange Invaders in 1983 and The Philadelphia Experiment in 1984, the latter earning her a Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1987, she achieved widespread fame starring as police officer Anne Lewis in Paul Verhoeven's science fiction action film RoboCop, receiving another Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress. She reprised the role in RoboCop 2 in 1990 and RoboCop 3 in 1993, earning a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for the third installment.

Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Allen appeared in various projects across film, television, and theater. Her film credits during this period include Poltergeist III in 1988, Limit Up in 1990, the Lifetime television film Memories of Murder in 1990, the French drama Les patriotes in 1994, and Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight in 1998. She also performed on Broadway in a production of Dial M For Murder from 1995 to 1996 and made guest appearances on television series including Touched by an Angel and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

In 2008, Allen shifted her focus from acting to cancer patient advocacy, inspired by the death of her friend and former co-star Wendie Jo Sperber in 2005. In December 2010, she was named the executive director of the weSPARK Cancer Support Center in Los Angeles, an organization founded by Sperber, where she dedicated herself to program format development, fundraising, and administration.