Sarah Jessica Parker

Sarah Jessica Parker is an American actress and television producer whose career spans over five decades across stage, screen, and television. She achieved global stardom for her performance as Carrie Bradshaw in the HBO comedy-drama series Sex and the City (1998–2004). For her work on the show, she won two Primetime Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2022, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Born on March 25, 1965, in Nelsonville, Ohio, Parker is the daughter of Barbara Parker, a nursery-school operator and teacher, and Stephen Parker, an entrepreneur and journalist. After her parents divorced, her mother married Paul Forste. Raised in a large family of eight children that included full siblings Timothy Britten Parker and Pippin Parker, she trained in singing and ballet as a young girl. Her family lived in Cincinnati, Dobbs Ferry, Roosevelt Island, Manhattan, and Englewood, where she attended Dwight Morrow High School. Parker also studied at the School of American Ballet, the New York Professional Children's School, the School for Creative and Performing Arts, and Hollywood High School.

Parker made her Broadway debut at age 11 in the 1976 revival of The Innocents. She subsequently performed in the Broadway musical Annie, starting in the role of July before starring as the title character in 1979. She led the CBS sitcom Square Pegs in 1982 and made major early film appearances in Footloose (1984), Firstborn (1984), Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), and Flight of the Navigator (1986). Throughout the 1990s, she appeared in feature films including L.A. Story (1991), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Hocus Pocus (1993), Striking Distance (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Miami Rhapsody (1995), The First Wives Club (1996), and Mars Attacks! (1996), as well as the 1995 off-Broadway play Sylvia.

Parker gained widespread acclaim portraying Carrie Bradshaw, the main protagonist and narrator of Sex and the City. She reprised the character in two feature films, Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010), and in the revival series And Just Like That... (2021–2025).

Concurrently, Parker starred in movies such as The Family Stone (2005), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination, Failure to Launch (2006), Smart People (2008), Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), New Year's Eve (2011), and Hocus Pocus 2 (2022). She also produced and starred in the independent films Spinning into Butter (2007) and Here and Now (2018). Her later television projects included a guest appearance on Glee (2012) and a starring, executive-producing role in the HBO series Divorce (2016–2019), which garnered her another Golden Globe nomination. Since 2005, she has operated her production company, Pretty Matches.

Labeled a fashion icon, Parker hosted the 2000 MTV Movie Awards in 14 outfits and has made widely publicized Met Gala appearances. Her theatre work includes starring alongside her husband, Matthew Broderick, in a revival of Neil Simon's play Plaza Suite. Across her career, Parker has accumulated six Golden Globe Awards.