Lea Thompson

Early life

Lea Thompson was born on May 31, 1961, in Rochester, Minnesota, one of five children of Clifford and Barbara Barry Thompson, a musician. She has two sisters, Coleen Goodrich and Shannon Katona, and two brothers, Andrew and Barry. Thompson is of Irish, English, Scots-Irish, German, and distant Dutch ancestry.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, who was the artistic director at the time, told Thompson, "You're a lovely dancer, but you're too stocky." She said it was "my epiphany when I decided to stop dancing and not be a ballet dancer. It was a wonderful moment because I could've been banging my head against the wall for another 10 years."

Thompson appeared in a number of Burger King advertisements in the 1980s with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Elisabeth Shue, her later co-star in Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III.

Career

In 1982, Thompson played Cecily "Sissy" Loper in the interactive live-action video game MysteryDisc: Murder, Anyone?. She made her movie debut in 1983 with Jaws 3-D. Thompson recalled the film as "the very first movie I ever got, but I lied and said I had done a couple of other movies, so when I showed up, I really knew absolutely nothing. Also, I had said that I knew how to water ski. And I did not. So I had, like, five days to learn really, really complicated water-skiing things, because I had to fit into the Sea World water-skiing show. I don't even know how to swim!" Thompson followed this with All the Right Moves (1983), Red Dawn (1984), and The Wild Life (1984).

Thompson's most famous role is that of Lorraine Baines McFly in the Back to the Future trilogy, with the first film released in 1985. Her character is the mother of Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), whom Marty meets when she is a 1950s teenager after he travels back in time. Marty has to avoid letting Lorraine fall in love with him instead of with his future father, George McFly (Crispin Glover), leading to awkward scenes in which Lorraine is attracted to Marty.

In 1986, Thompson starred in SpaceCamp and Howard the Duck. For the latter film, she sang several songs on the soundtrack in character, as musician Beverly Switzler, who was the lead vocalist for a band called Cherry Bomb. The recordings appeared on the soundtrack album and on singles. Rounding out film appearances in the late 1980s, Thompson starred in Some Kind of Wonderful, Casual Sex?, and The Wizard of Loneliness. She also had a prominent role in the 1989 TV film Nightbreaker, for which she was nominated for a CableACE Award. In the early 1990s, Thompson starred as Alice Mitchell, the mother of the eponymous character Dennis Mitchell (Mason Gamble) in Dennis the Menace (1993), the villainess Laura Jackson in The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), and Ms. Roberts, a snooty ballet instructor in The Little Rascals (1994). She also appeared in several TV films throughout the 1990s, including The Substitute Wife (1994) and The Right to Remain Silent (1996).

Thompson found moderate critical and popular success as the star of the NBC sitcom Caroline in the City from 1995 to 1999. In 1996, she received a People's Choice Award for Favorite Female Performer in a New TV Series, while her show won for Favorite New TV Comedy Series at the 22nd People's Choice Awards. Thompson also starred in A Will of Their Own, a 1998 American television mini-series directed by Karen Arthur. The film follows six generations of females within one family, and their struggle for power and independence in America. The film debuted on October 18, 1998, on NBC to strong critical reviews.

Personal life

Thompson was engaged to Dennis Quaid from 1984 to 1987. She met film director Howard Deutch on the set of Some Kind of Wonderful in 1987, and they were married in 1989.

Thompson and Deutch have two daughters, both actresses: Madelyn Deutch (b. 1991) and Zoey Deutch (b. 1994), with whom she sang on stage in the Bye Bye Birdie production for the 16th annual Alzheimer's Association "A Night at Sardi's" in March 2008.