Sheryl Lee

Sheryl Lee was born on April 22, 1967, in Augsburg, Bavaria, West Germany, the first of three children born to an artist mother and an architect father. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado, graduating from Fairview High School in 1985. Lee subsequently pursued formal actor training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California, and later at the North Carolina School of the Arts, the National Theatre Conservatory in Denver, and the University of Colorado. She eventually relocated to Seattle, Washington, where she performed in stage productions and appeared in commercials, studying under theater director Mark Jenkins at the Empty Space Theater.

Her professional breakthrough came through director David Lynch, who discovered her after seeing a publicity photograph from one of her Seattle stage appearances. Lynch initially cast her as the deceased Laura Palmer in the 1990 television series Twin Peaks, intending the role to be a minor one. Her work on the pilot, particularly a scene in a home video filmed with another character, convinced Lynch of her broader capabilities, and she subsequently appeared in flashbacks as Laura and took on the recurring role of Laura's cousin Maddy Ferguson, a character written specifically to give her a more substantial presence on the show. She also appeared as Glinda the Good Witch in Lynch's 1990 film Wild at Heart. Lee reprised the Laura Palmer role in the 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, earning Best Actress nominations at both the Independent Spirit Awards and the Saturn Awards for her performance. She returned to the role once more in the 2017 Showtime revival of Twin Peaks.

In 1992, Lee made her Broadway debut in the title role of Oscar Wilde's Salome at the Circle in the Square Theatre, directed by Robert Allan Ackerman. She performed the role opposite Al Pacino, with the production also featuring Suzanne Bertish, Esai Morales, and Arnold Vosloo.

Her film work following Twin Peaks included the role of Astrid Kirchherr in Backbeat (1994), a biopic of the early career of The Beatles opposite Stephen Dorff. She played Liza in a 1995 adaptation of Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground opposite Henry Czerny, and took on the dual roles of Helga and Resi Noth in Mother Night (1996), based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel. She starred alongside Craig Sheffer in Bliss (1997) and played Katrina in John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) opposite James Woods and Daniel Baldwin. Additional film credits include a leading role in the 1999 crime drama Angel's Dance with Kyle Chandler and Jim Belushi, the lead role of Elinore Murphy in Children on Their Birthdays (2002), based on a Truman Capote short story, and a supporting role as April in Debra Granik's Winter's Bone (2010), which won the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival that year. For Winter's Bone, Lee shared Best Ensemble awards from the Detroit Film Critics Society and the Gotham Awards with the film's cast. She appeared as May in Gregg Araki's White Bird in a Blizzard (2014) opposite Shailene Woodley and Eva Green, and played Lucie Sliger in Texas Killing Fields (2011) alongside Jessica Chastain, Sam Worthington, and Chloë Grace Moretz.

On television, Lee played Dr. Sarah Church in the single-season series L.A. Doctors (1998–1999) and the role of Marlene Cadena in the 2003 series Kingpin opposite Yancey Arias and Bobby Cannavale. From 2005 to 2006, she appeared in the third season of One Tree Hill as Ellie Harp, the biological mother of Peyton Sawyer, a character dealing with breast cancer. Between 2007 and 2009, she recurred on the ABC series Dirty Sexy Money as Andrea Smithson, the mother of Brian Darling's illegitimate child. Lee also joined several Twin Peaks cast members for a Twin Peaks-themed episode of the series Psych titled "Dual Spires," reuniting with Sherilyn Fenn, Dana Ashbrook, Ray Wise, Lenny Von Dohlen, Robyn Lively, and Catherine E. Coulson. In 2016, she appeared in the Netflix production Rebirth, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and had a role as Karen in Woody Allen's Café Society.