Ally Sheedy

Alexandra Elizabeth Sheedy was born on June 13, 1962, in New York City, where she was raised alongside a brother and a sister. Her mother, Charlotte (née Baum), worked as a writer and press agent with involvement in women's and civil rights movements, while her father, John J. Sheedy Jr., was a Manhattan advertising executive. Her mother is of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, with a maternal grandmother from Odessa, Ukraine, and her father is of Irish Catholic background. Her parents divorced in 1971. Sheedy attended the Bank Street School for Children and later Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, graduating in 1980. She began dancing with the American Ballet Theatre at age six, with plans to pursue it professionally, before ultimately setting aside dance in favor of acting and studying with acting teacher Harold Guskin. At twelve, she wrote a children's book, She Was Nice to Mice, published by McGraw-Hill Education, which became a best-seller. The story was adapted as a spoken word album on the Caedmon label in 1976, and on June 19, 1975, Sheedy appeared on the game show To Tell the Truth to promote the novel. At eighteen, she relocated to Los Angeles, enrolling in the drama department at the University of Southern California, where she completed three years of coursework toward a BFA in acting while simultaneously pursuing her professional career.

Sheedy began acting in local stage productions as a teenager and appeared in several television films in 1981, as well as three episodes of Hill Street Blues. Her feature film debut came in Bad Boys (1983), in which she played the girlfriend of Sean Penn's character. That same year she appeared in WarGames, which earned her her first Saturn Award nomination for Best Actress. Throughout the 1980s she became associated with the Brat Pack, a group of young actors prominent in that decade's popular films, with roles in Oxford Blues (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), St. Elmo's Fire (1985), Twice in a Lifetime (1985), Blue City (1986), Short Circuit (1986), and Maid to Order (1987). Her work in Fear (1990) and Man's Best Friend (1993) brought her two additional Saturn Award nominations for Best Actress. Other film appearances during the 1990s included Betsy's Wedding (1990) and Only the Lonely (1991).

In 1998, Sheedy starred opposite Radha Mitchell in the independent film High Art, playing a drug-addicted lesbian photographer. The performance earned her the Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead, as well as recognition from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics. The following year she took over the lead role in the off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, becoming the first woman to play the genderqueer character Hedwig, though her run ended early. Also in 1999, she appeared in the independent ensemble film Sugar Town. In 2003, she guest starred in the second-season episode "Playing God" of The Dead Zone, reuniting her with Breakfast Club co-star Anthony Michael Hall. She appeared in a 2007 episode of CSI, joined the cast of the ABC Family series Kyle XY in March 2008, and beginning in 2009 played the recurring role of Mr. Yang across multiple season finales of the USA Network series Psych. She appeared in the film Life During Wartime in 2009 and played Carol in the Freeform series Single Drunk Female from 2022 to 2023. As of 2021, Sheedy has held a professorship in the theater department at the City College of New York.

Sheedy's Broadway career includes an appearance in 2005 and participation in The 24 Hour Plays in 2004. She is a native of New York, New York.

On April 12, 1992, Sheedy married actor David Lansbury, nephew of actress Angela Lansbury and son of Edgar Lansbury. The couple had a transgender son, Beckett, and Sheedy has spoken about learning from his transition. In 2008, she and Lansbury filed for divorce. In January 2018, Sheedy posted the #MeToo hashtag alongside the names of James Franco and Christian Slater before later deleting the tweets. Sheedy is also the author of a poetry collection, Yesterday I Saw the Sun, published by Summit Books in 1991.