Ally Sheedy

Ally Sheedy
Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy (born June 13, 1962) is an American actress. She made her feature film debut in Bad Boys (1983) and came to prominence as a member of the Brat Pack with roles in Oxford Blues (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), and Blue City (1986). She received three Saturn Award nominations for Best Actress for her performances in WarGames (1983), Fear (1990), and Man's Best Friend (1993). For playing a drug-addicted lesbian photographer in High Art (1998), Sheedy won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. She also starred in the films Twice in a Lifetime (1985), Short Circuit (1986), Betsy's Wedding (1990), Only the Lonely (1991), and Life During Wartime (2009), as well as the series Single Drunk Female (2022–2023).
Early life
Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy was born in New York City on June 13, 1962, and has a brother and a sister. Her mother, Charlotte (née Baum), is a writer and press agent who was involved in women's and civil rights movements, and her father, John J. Sheedy Jr., is a Manhattan advertising executive. Sheedy's mother is Eastern European Jewish, and her father is of Irish Catholic background. Her maternal grandmother was from Odesa, Ukraine. Her parents divorced in 1971.
She attended the Bank Street School for Children, followed by Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in New York City, graduating in 1980. She started dancing with the American Ballet Theatre at age six and was planning to make it a full-time career. She gave up dance in favor of acting full time, however, and then started studying with acting teacher Harold Guskin. At age 12 she wrote a book, She Was Nice to Mice, which was published by McGraw-Hill Education and became a best-seller. The story was released in 1976 as a spoken word album on the Caedmon label (TC 1506). On June 19, 1975, she appeared on the game show To Tell the Truth.
At age 18, Sheedy relocated to Los Angeles, California, where she enrolled in the drama department at the University of Southern California. Sheedy concurrently began her acting career and intermittently completed three years' worth of courses toward a BFA degree in acting.
Career
Sheedy started acting in local stage productions as a teenager. After appearing in several television films in 1981, as well as three episodes of the television series Hill Street Blues, she made her feature film debut in Bad Boys (1983), starring Sean Penn, wherein she played Penn's humiliated girlfriend. During the 1980s she had roles in popular films such as WarGames, The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, Short Circuit, and Maid to Order.
Sheedy starred alongside Radha Mitchell in the 1998 independent film High Art, about a romance between two women and the power of art. Her performance in High Art was recognized with awards from the Independent Spirit Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and National Society of Film Critics.
In 1999, Sheedy took over the lead role in the off-Broadway production of the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. She was the first cis-gender female to play the part of the genderqueer Hedwig, but her run ended early amid "mixed" reviews. That same year, she was cast as a lead actress in Sugar Town, an independent film that featured an ensemble cast of actors and musicians.
She was reunited with Breakfast Club co-star Anthony Michael Hall when she became a special guest star on his television show The Dead Zone, in the second-season episode "Playing God", from 2003.
Sheedy has also appeared in the episode "Leapin' Lizards" of C.S.I., in which she played a woman who murdered her boyfriend's wife while mixed up in a cult. On March 3, 2008, Sheedy was introduced as the character Sarah in the ABC Family show Kyle XY. In 2009, she played the role of Mr. Yang on the USA Network television show Psych (in the third-season finale), a role that she reprised in the fourth season, fifth season, and seventh season finales.
As of year 2021, Sheedy has been a professor in the theater department at the City College of New York of the City University of New York in the Hamilton Heights section of New York City. She was on an episode of GMA3: What You Need to Know on WABC-TV on May 10, 2023.
Personal life
Sheedy became a vegetarian at the age of 12.
Sheedy dated Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora for less than a year in the 1980s. She stated in Los Angeles Times that the relationship led her to abuse drugs, a claim Sambora denied. In 1985, Sheedy was admitted to Hazelden Foundation and in the 1990s was treated for a sleeping pill addiction, an experience she drew on for her role as a drug-addicted photographer in High Art.
On April 12, 1992, Sheedy married actor David Lansbury, the nephew of actress Angela Lansbury and son of Edgar Lansbury, the original producer of Godspell. They have a son, Beckett, born in 1994. Beckett is a trans man from whose transition Sheedy says she "learned a lot". In 2008, Sheedy announced that she and Lansbury had filed for divorce.
In January 2018, Sheedy tweeted the #MeToo hashtag along with the names of James Franco and Christian Slater, implying that they have been sexually abusive to her, but later deleted the tweets. Franco later stated that he did not know why Sheedy tweeted the accusations.
Filmography
Film
Television
Awards and nominations
Books
She Was Nice to Mice, McGraw-Hill, 1975,
Yesterday I Saw the Sun: Poems, Summit Books, 1991,
References
External links
Salon interview (June 25, 1998)
New York magazine interview (June 15, 1998)
Breakfast Club cast interview at the Chicago Tribune (February 17, 1985)
"The Poetry of Ally Sheedy: A Look Back" (February 24, 2012)
1962 births
20th-century American actresses
20th-century American writers
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American actresses
Actresses from New York City
American female dancers
Dancers from New York (state)
American film actresses
American people of Irish descent
American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
American stage actresses
American television actresses
Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School alumni
Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead winners
Jewish American actresses
Living people
People from Fire Island, New York
USC School of Dramatic Arts alumni
21st-century American Jews