Kyra Sedgwick Movies and TV Shows: 14 of the Silver Screen Star's Best Roles

Flashback to 1982 and the daytime soap opera Another World, where a young actress with cascading curly blonde hair won the hearts of millions. This was the beginning of Kyra Sedgwick movies and TV shows as, at age 16, she was appearing in her first acting role as Julia Shearer.

Kyra Sedgwick's movies and TV shows have since spanned four decades, but it all started on Another World. “I felt like a misfit toy. Because suddenly you’re different from everyone else. But I was dead serious," she noted.

That thoughtful and stern attitude has served the now 58-year-old actress, director and producer very well throughout her life and career

Born Kyra Minturn Sedgwick on August 19, 1965 in New York City, Sedgwick attended private schools and spent a lot of time playing handball and going to horror movies and plays downtown in the Village.

A self-professed late 70s hippie, Sedgwick listened to Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan, saying, “Then my parents would go away for the weekend, and we’d party.” Upon graduation from USC, Kyra pursued her acting ambitions on stage and the big and small screens.

Her first big break came as Donna, the high school sweetheart of Tom Cruise in 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July, though she will likely be remembered for her role as Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT series The Closer, which ran for seven seasons from 2005 to 2012.

As committed as she is to her entertainment endeavors, Sedgwick’s priority has always been to her marriage to fellow actor Kevin Bacon and raising their two kids. She was only 23 when she married and conceived her son Travis on her honeymoon. Her other child is daughter, Sosie, an actress and one Sedgwick has directed.

Related: Actor Kevin Bacon Helps Family Find Their Lost Pig…Also Named Kevin Bacon

With all the accolades and awards, Sedgwick still has one acting dream — ”To be in a musical,” she told NPR. “I just feel it’s so transporting for the actors as well as for the audience. I feel like people are just longing to be back in the theatre. You know when all the dancing girls come out and the music crescendos and ... oh my God! You just want to jump up out of your seat in hysteria! I would love to do something like that. Just super fun. No crying, no big dramatic moments.”

Kyra Sedgwick movies and TV shows

Here is a look at the top 14 Kyra Sedgwick movies and TV shows that have solidified her career and transported viewers for years.

War and Love (1985)

A fresh faced Sedgwick stars as Halina, who is involved with Jacek, a Jewish survivor of Nazi occupied Poland during World War II. Halina suffers a great deal because she is Jewish, and Sedgwick’s performance brings tears to anyone’s eyes at inflicted pain at the hands of the Germans plays out.

Lemon Sky (1988)

Starring Kevin Bacon, a young Kyra Sedgwick also took top billing in this television movie. The two met and fell in love during this production about a high school teen from the Midwest who moves to San Diego, California in the 1950s to live with his estranged dad and his new family. Sedgwick plays Carol, a promiscuous teenaged boarder who spends a great deal of time with the U.S. Navy.

Born on the Fourth of July (1989)

Of all the Kyra Sedgwick movies and TV shows, Born of the Fourth of July will always be recognized as her big break. Oliver Stone’s biographical anti-war film portrays the life of Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), who was paralyzed in the Vietnam War and later becomes a pro-human rights political activist. Sedgwick took on the role of Donna, Kovic’s girlfriend; in real life, she was pregnant with her first child, Travis during the shoot.

Pyrates (1991)

Another film co-starring Bacon and Sedgwick, the set up for this comedy is that they play a couple who unleash pyrokinesis — the purported ability to create fires with your mind — after having sex. Sounds hot!

Miss Rose White (1992)

Sedgwick played the title role in the Emmy Award winning TV film as a Jewish immigrant who comes to terms with her ethnicity. Born Reyzel Weiss, she escaped Poland during WWII and settled in America with her father.

As an adult, she changes her name to Rose White and remains silent about her past — until that past emerges as Rose learns that her presumed dead sister, Lusia, survived the Holocaust. Eventually Rose has to come to terms with her painful background. The role led Sedgwick to a Golden Globe nomination.

Singles (1992)

Sedgwick nails the angst in this Gen-X classic film, though in actuality the young actress was married with two kids by the time she was 26. “I didn’t experience the singles scene at all," she explained. "It’s so crazy to me to this day that I met Kevin at 21 and got married soon after. When I look back on it, it’s insane, but I had fallen for him.”

The romantic comedy focuses on the shaky romantic lives of a group of early Gen X-ers in Seattle, Washington at the height of the 1990s grunge movement. Most of the characters live on an apartment block with a sign that says “Singles,” which refers to single bedroom apartments for rent.

(Find Kevin Bacon in our sister site's look back at the iconic 1984 Footloose cast!)

Something to Talk About (1995)

With a tagline of “a story about husbands, wives, parents, children and other natural disasters,” this film packs a punch. As Emma Rae King, Sedgwick’s performance was singled out as the best part of the movie for her acting talent and sense of humor. The film was named after the Bonnie Raitt song of the same name. Another Golden Globe nomination nod for Sedgwick!

The Woodsman (2004)

An intense drama starring Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick that begins with Walter’s (Bacon) release from prison after 12 years for being a convicted sex offender. Shunned by his family and residents of the small town he lives in, Walter finds comfort in the tough-talking Vickie (Sedgwick). But does one ever rebound from the demons of assaulting young girls? Walter finds himself confronting this thought when he befriends a young girl in a park.

Loverboy (2005)

Directed by Kevin Bacon, he shared producing credits with his wife and star of the movie, Kyra Sedgwick. He also directed daughter Sosie Bacon, son Travis Bacon and brother-in-law Robert Sedgwick, while his brother Michael Bacon provided the original score.

Kevin wanted to keep it all in the family for this emotional film about a neglected daughter, Emily, who becomes a possessive mother. She tells her son Paul, now six years old, the story of his life with occasional flashbacks to Emily’s own childhood.

The Closer (2005-2012)

Her role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, a southern belle, earned Sedgwick an Emmy and a Golden Globe award. In this police procedural taking place in Los Angeles, her character’s signature catchphrase with a classic southern drawl, — “Thank you, thank you so much” — had more to it than it appeared. “Brenda Leigh was basically saying eff you,” said Sedgwick upon accepting an award. “And `bless his heart’ was a way of saying that person is insane.”

Sedgwick has said she felt closer – no pun intended – to Brenda Leigh than many of her other characters. “Women get to be leaders. You’re number one on the call sheet or the executive producer. You have to conduct yourself with a lot of diplomacy. You have to make sure not to hurt men’s egos, which I’m really good at. And I have had to be since I was on the soap. So, Brenda was a really good role model in that way. She’s kickass and was able to kick butt, but also do it with a smile and heels.” Brenda Leigh is undoubtedly one of the most iconic characters out of all Kyra Sedgwick movies and TV shows.

Ten Days in the Valley (2017-2018)

Jane Sadler is an overworked TV producer and single mother whose young daughter goes missing in the middle of the night. Her life gets more complicated equally in her real world and TV police series as they both collapse under the stress. ABC pulled the series after just four episodes aired, but later finished airing the remainder of the season. 

Story of a Girl (2017)

This Lifetime drama was directed by Sedgwick in her directorial debut and based on the novel of the same name. She kept it all in the family – almost – as it starred Kevin Bacon, Jon Tenney (her Closer hubbie) and daughter Sosie Bacon. The coming-of-age drama reveals how a young woman pushed beyond her gloomy past eventually becomes the creator of her own future.

Related: Best Lifetime Movies: 12 New Thrillers That Will Keep You on the Edge of Your Seat

Call Your Mother (2021)

The short-lived comedy sees empty nest mother Jean Raines (Sedgwick), a retired teacher, reinsert herself into her children’s lives, much to their chagrin. Her moving cross country from Iowa to Los Angeles in order to be with her kids didn’t resonate well with viewers.

The Summer I Turned Pretty (2023)

In the second season of this hit series based on a YA romance trilogy, Sedgwick’s character, Julia, arrives at the sleepy fictional seaside town of Cousins Beach and “riles some stuff up," she said. The coming-of-age romantic drama on Amazon Prime tells of a teenage love triangle with two brothers.

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