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Sarah Jessica Parker

As a young girl, she trained in singing and ballet, soon being cast in the Broadway production of The Innocents. Her family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and then to Dobbs Ferry, New York, near New York City, where Parker was developing her career as a child actress. In 1977, the family moved to the newly opened planned community on Roosevelt Island, in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, and later to Manhattan proper; her parents later moved to Englewood, New Jersey where she attended Dwight Morrow High School.[3]

Parker attended the School for Creative and Performing Arts, the School of American Ballet and the Professional Children's School, and later Dwight Morrow High School. She and four siblings appeared in a revival of The Sound of Music, and Parker went on to the new 1977-81 Broadway musical Annie, first in the small role of "July," and then succeeding Andrea McArdle and Shelley Bruce in the lead role of the plucky Depression-era orphan, beginning March 6, 1979. Parker held the role for a year.

In 1982, Parker was cast as the co-lead of the CBS-TV sitcom Square Pegs. The show lasted only one season before being canceled by the network, but Parker's performance, as a shy, misfit teen who showed hidden depths, was critically well-received. In the three years that followed, she was cast in four films, the most significant of those being Footloose in 1984 and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, co-starring Helen Hunt, in 1985.

In 1986, Parker appeared in the cult classic Flight of the Navigator, a Disney science fiction film about a boy, David, who is relativistically transported in time by an alien spacecraft eight years into the future without aging.

By the early 1990s, Parker's career was gaining momentum. In 1991, she appeared in a supporting role in the romantic comedy, L.A. Story; both the movie and her performance garnered positive reviews. The following year she landed an important starring role in the well-received film Honeymoon in Vegas, co-starring Nicolas Cage. Her 1993 role in the film Hocus Pocus was a higher grosser at the box office but received negative reviews. The following year, she appeared opposite Johnny Depp in the critically acclaimed movie Ed Wood.

The film Miami Rhapsody, in 1995, saw her back on familiar territory with more romantic comedy material and a leading role. She appeared in another Tim Burton-directed movie, Mars Attacks!, as well as The First Wives Club and The Substance of Fire, in which she reprised her 1991 stage role, in 1996. In 1997, she appeared as Francesca Lanfield, a washed-up former child actress, in the comedy Til There Was You Later that year, the script for an HBO drama/comedy series titled Sex and the City was sent to Parker; the show's creator, Darren Star, was determined that she be cast in his project. Despite some early doubts about being cast in a long-term television series, Parker agreed to star.[4]

The show proved to be an instant success, raising Parker's profile considerably. Despite the show's increasingly risque storylines, Parker retained the strict no-nudity clause in her contract throughout the show's six-season run. Parker became a producer for the show starting with its third season. In 2004, Parker won an Emmy award for her lead role (after five consecutive losses). Many gambling and betting establishments stopped taking bets on her Emmy victory, because it was so widely predicted that she would win.[citation needed] Parker stated in 2006 that she "will never do a television show again",[5] although she will co-executive produce a new HBO series based on Washingtonienne, but will not star in it.[6]

After Sex and the City ended in 2004, rumors of a film version circulated and it was revealed that a script had been completed for such a project. However, Parker commented that it would likely never be made.[7] Two years later, however, preparations were resumed, and the film was released throughout the world on May 29, 2008. A sequel is also in early talks for 2009. Parker was romantically involved with actor Robert Downey Jr. from 1984 until 1991. They met on the set of Firstborn. Downey had a drug problem and this had a significant effect on their relationship; referring to that time in her life, Parker has said: "I believed I was the person holding him together".[15] As her career continued to blossom into the 1990s, she met journalist John Kennedy Jr. and dated him for several months. She was also romantically linked to singer-songwriter Joshua Kadison in the early 1990s, who described their tumultuous relationship and their cat Moses in the song "Jessie" on the album Painted Desert Serenade.

On May 19, 1997, she married actor Matthew Broderick, to whom she was introduced by her brother at the Naked Angels theater company where they both performed.[16] The couple married in a civil ceremony in a historic synagogue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that is no longer used as a house of worship; both Parker and Broderick (who each have one Jewish parent) consider themselves to be "culturally Jewish."[17] The couple's first child, son James Wilkie Broderick, was born on October 28, 2002. He was named after Broderick's father, the Irish-American actor James Broderick. His middle name is that of author Wilkie Collins, an author Broderick and Parker greatly admire.

Parker and Broderick live in New York City and frequent the arts. Parker and Broderick also spend a considerable amount of time at their holiday home in County Donegal, Republic of Ireland where Broderick spent his summers as a child. Parker is a prominent member of the Hollywood's Women's Political Committee and is UNICEF's Representative for the Performing Arts; in 2006, she traveled to Liberia as a UNICEF celebrity ambassador, and has commented that, "It's a place that gets little or no attention, so we're going to try and bring some attention to it."[18] She is currently a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for the United States.

As of 2008, she lives in New York City with her husband and son.