Pretty much every season The Closer was on air, you could bet critics were raving about Kyra Sedgwick. She got so many Emmy and Golden Globe noms. But the very first time she turned the heads of the Golden Globes were for TV roles she played way before she became Brenda Leigh on The Closer. She got her first for a sensational turn in a TV movie in 1992, then her next in 1995 for her supporting role in the hit movie Something to Talk About.
To truly understand Sedgwick's talents, though, you have to go back even further to when her career started in the 1980s. Below, we take you back through 10 times Sedgwick impressed us on TV in her career, before and after she changed the game on The Closer.
1
Troubled granddaughter on Another World (1982)
Sedgwick made her TV debut playing a troubled granddaughter Julia Shearer of Another World's original matriarch Liz Matthews.
Image: The Everett Collection
2
Drug dealer's girlfriend on Miami Vice (1985)
Before she was busting criminals, Sedgwick was living the shady life in the Miami Vice episode "Phil the Shill." In the end, once her drug dealer meets his demise, she runs off with the episode's titular con man Phil to get in on another scam.
Image: The Everett Collection
3
Stepdaughter to a greedy man on Amazing Stories (1986)
For Steven Spielberg's "Thanksgiving" episode of his series Amazing Stories, Kyra was cast as the charming stepdaughter to David Carradine's greedy father figure in an episode that found strange being living in a bottomless hole on their property right around the holiday. In the end, it's Kyra who figures out that all the beings really want is to break bread.
Image: NBCUniversal Television Distribution
4
Italian orphan in Miss Rose White (1992)
Sedgwick starred in the TV movie Miss Rose White as a young Italian girl shipped off to America after being abandoned by her family. The plot hinges on a surprise reunion between Sedgwick's title character and the sister she had no idea she had.
Image: The Everett Collection
5
A "female Howard Stern" on Talk to Me (2000)
By 2000, Sedgwick was ready for her first starring role on TV, and it came in the short-lived series Talk to Me. An early review labeled Sedgwick's character a "female Howard Stern," portraying the host of a radio show going through a bad breakup. The show was unfortunately cancelled after only 6 episodes.
Image: Touchstone Television
6
A woman with a split personality on Ally McBeal (2002)
One of Sedgwick's wildest guest roles came on Ally McBeal, when she was cast as Helena Greene, a woman with a split personality – with only one side that wants to divorce her husband. (That's a pretty dramatic love triangle!)
Image: 20th Television
7
ADA Quinn Coleman on Queens Supreme (2003)
Sedgwick's next attempt at joining a TV cast stretched a little further in Queens Supreme, where she played a tough attorney arguing cases in front of Oliver Platt's bench. It lasted 13 episodes, perhaps because as its tagline suggests, the show didn't follow the typical formula: "Just because they enforce the rules doesn't mean they play by them."
Image: CBS Television Distribution
8
Camouflage Carla on Sesame Street (2011)
Sedgwick was pretty tied up between 2005 and 2012 when The Closer was on air, but she made time after being awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to stop by Sesame Street. Watch her sing a song with Elmo!
9
Deputy Chief/Chief Madeline Wuntch on Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2014)
Sedgwick can handle comedy as well as drama, which she proved playing Captain Ray Holt's "arch-nemesis" on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Across nine episodes, she did so well, she even got a promotion!
Image: NBCUniversal Television Distribution
10
TV producer on Ten Days in the Valley (2017)
Most recently, we saw Sedgwick star in a short-lived series called Ten Days in the Valley, where she played a TV producer and single mother whose daughter suddenly goes missing. It's a pretty meta thing for a Kyra Sedgwick fan to watch, considering she's the producer of a crime drama and the police who cover her daughter's case are not exactly her show's biggest fans.
Image: Skydance Media
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