Jennifer Beals (born December 19, 1963 in Chicago, Illinois) is a former teen model and American film actress who is best known for her role as Alex Owens in the 1983 movie Flashdance.
She's biracial, with an African-American Protestant father (deceased since she was 10) and an Irish American Catholic mother, and is a graduate of Francis W. Parker School and Yale University. She's participated in more than 50 movies.
Jennifer was married to Alexandre Rockwell from 1986 to 1996, and, since 1998, has been married to Ken Dixon. She and Dixon had a daughter in October 2005. (Dixon has two children from a previous marriage).
Beals currently is starring in Showtime Network's The L Word, where she plays Bette Porter, an apparently economically and emotionally stable Ivy league educated woman. She will also star in the upcoming horror film The Grudge 2.
After the release of Flashdance, it was revealed that some of the scenes in that movie where athletics were required were actually performed not by Beals herself, but by double Marine Jahan.
She is a close friend of Quentin Tarantino's. Quentin often stayed at Beals's home while struggling as an aspiring director before Pulp Fiction was made. They appeared together in Four Rooms.
Despite her advanced state, Beals' pregnancy was not adapted into the storyline of The L Word's third season. However, during the first episode of this season, overly confident scene shots do let the viewers notice it.
The Grudge 2 (2006)
