Kyra Sedgwick earned praise for a variety of supporting and starring roles in films, but it was her award-winning, seven-year stint as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on The Closer that made her a household name. Sedgwick began her professional career at age sixteen with a recurring role on Another World. She studied theater at Sarah Lawrence and the University of Southern California but soon began acting full time, with a role in the 1988 TV movie Lemon Sky. She won an Emmy for her 1992 TV movie Miss Rose White, playing a Jewish immigrant. At the same time, she gained wider audiences with supporting roles in 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July, 1995’s Something to Talk About, and 1996’s Phenomenon. Her 2005–2012 lead role on The Closer (playing a talented but troubled investigator with great Southern charm) earned her a Golden Globe in 2007 and an Emmy in 2010. After the show’s finale, she returned to movies as an actor, director, and producer. She acted in films from 2015 to 2019, before shifting her focus to production and direction. She was a producer on the 2023 film Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and directed several episodes of TV shows such as Brooklyn Nine Nine and Grace and Frankie. In 2023, she held a recurring role on the hit Amazon Prime show The Summer I Turned Pretty.