Who Is Sarah Jessica Parker?
American actress Sarah Jessica Parker was born in Nelsonville, Ohio, on March 25, 1965. She is well recognized for her famous performance as Carrie Bradshaw in the television series Sex and the City (1998–2004) and its revival, And Just Like That (2021–25).
Additionally, she played the role in two feature films that came out in 2008 and 2010. The Family Stone (2005), Hocus Pocus (1993), L.A. Story (1991), and Footloose (1984) are some of Parker's other well-known motion pictures.
When Sarah Jessica Parker was eleven years old, her family relocated to New York City so that she and her siblings could pursue careers in entertainment. Parker had started attending ballet and acting classes as a child. She was cast as the lead in the Broadway version of Annie in 1978, and she stayed in the musical for almost three years.
She kept up her theatrical career and debuted in the movie Rich Kids in 1979. Parker played a dorky high school student in the television series Square Pegs in 1982. Despite having only one season, the show gained a cult following and gave her access to a number of film prospects, such as Footloose (1984) and Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985).
Sarah Jessica Parker continued to be involved in theater in addition to her film career, making appearances in shows like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1996), The Heidi Chronicles (1989), The Substance of Fire (1991), and Sylvia (1995), for which she won accolades from critics for her portrayal of a dog.
She acted beside her longtime lover Matthew Broderick in the latter; the two got married in 1997. Parker also starred in the 1996–1997 Broadway production of Once Upon a Mattress. She and Broderick returned to the stage in 2022 to perform Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite as the main act.
When Sarah Jessica Parker played the vivacious Sandy alongside Steve Martin in L.A. Story in 1991, her cinematic career took a significant turn for the better. A series of movies followed, including Nicolas Cage’s Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), the comedy Hocus Pocus (1993) about witches, Tim Burton’s biography Ed Wood (1994) about the so-called “worst director of all time” (played by Johnny Depp), and the revenge comedy The First Wives Club (1996). Parker had not yet established herself as a leading lady in spite of these assignments.
Sex and the City significantly altered that. Inspired by Candace Bushnell’s best-selling book, the series debuted in 1998 and made Sarah Jessica Parker a household name. The program followed four friends as they looked for love in New York City: Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Carrie Bradshaw (Parker).
The show, which aired on HBO, gained popularity because to its candid, humorous, and even daring depiction of women in their thirties. As relationship columnist Carrie, Parker’s combination of humor and emotional nuance won her multiple accolades, including Golden Globe Awards (2000–02 and 2004) and Emmy Awards (2001 and 2004).
Parker starred in movies including The Family Stone (2005) and the romantic comedy Failure to Launch (2006) following the conclusion of Sex and the City in 2004. Later, she played Carrie Bradshaw again in the Sex and the City movie adaptations (2008 and 2010). Did You Hear About the Morgans?, a comedy about a married couple who enroll in the witness protection program after witnessing a murder, stars her opposite Hugh Grant in 2009. She later voiced an alien figure in the animated movie Escape from Planet Earth (2013) and played an overworked mother in I Don’t Know How She Does It (2011).
Parker made a comeback to HBO in the lead character of a mother and wife who chooses to dissolve her marriage in the comedy series Divorce (2016–19). Then, in And Just Like That… (2021–25), which was marketed as a new chapter of Sex and the City, she returned to the role of Carrie Bradshaw. When Parker reconnected with Bette Midler and Kathy Najimy in Hocus Pocus 2, the follow-up to the cult hit from 1993, in 2022, she returned to another popular character.
In 1991, Parker started dating actor Matthew Broderick; the two were married in 1997. Their twin daughters, Tabitha and Marion Broderick, were born via surrogacy in 2009, while their son, James Wilkie Broderick, was born in 2002.
In the 2010s, Parker, a voracious reader, co-founded the SJP book imprint with Hogarth. As editorial director, she concentrated on literary fiction. The first book published by the imprint was A Place for Us (2018) by Fatima Farheen Mirza. In collaboration with independent publisher Zando, Parker established SJP Lit, another label, in 2022. Her other entrepreneurial endeavors included the 2005 debut of a perfume brand and the 2014 introduction of her shoe range, SJP, which ended in 2024.