Who

The bony fashion plate and longtime actress has appeared in dozens of films and TV shows, but she'll always be Carrie from Sex and the City to us. Her husband, of course, is Matthew Broderick.

Backstory

Parker was born outside Cincinnati, Ohio, and her parents divorced when she was three. She grew up with her mother and stepfather, a truck driver who had trouble making ends meet and relied on welfare to support the family. Sarah was just eight when she started acting professionally, making her small screen debut in a TV special, The Little Match Girl. She was 11 when her family moved to Roosevelt Island so she could pursue her budding career, and made her first appearance on stage in the Broadway show The Innocents. Her big breakthrough came in 1979 when, at the age of 14, she played the lead in the Broadway production of Annie.

Parker has been busy acting ever since, first in early '80s kiddie shows like 3-2-1 Contact and Square Pegs, and later in films like Footloose (alongside Kevin Bacon), L.A. Story, Honeymoon in Vegas, Miami Rhapsody, and The First Wives Club. But although she earned generally positive reviews for her performances, she was hardly an A-lister when Darren Star approached her to play the fashion obsessed Carrie Bradshaw in his new series Sex and the City, loosely based on Candace Bushnell's columns for the Observer. Debuting in 1998, the HBO show immediately turned Parker into a household name.

Of note

It's hard to think of a TV character in recent years that—for better or worse—has had more of a cultural impact than Parker's Carrie Bradshaw. Women dressed like her (even if they couldn't afford the Manolos, they could buy a nameplate necklace), drank like her (you can blame her for the girls from Jersey who still order cosmos), and did their best to date like her, too. The Carrie effect has continued long after the show's demise—middle class girls everywhere still horrify their parents by becoming sex columnists.

In 2004, Sex and the City went off the air amid rumors that a film version was in the works. It took more than two years to sort out the details, however, reportedly because of contract disputes (and tension) between Parker and co-star Kim Cattrall. In late 2007 filming finally commenced—Michael Patrick King was the writer and director—and the movie arrived in theaters in May 2008.

But Parker had kept plenty busy in the interim. She starred in a few mediocre films including Failure to Launch and The Family Stone, and focused on producing as part of a development deal with HBO. Her Pretty Matches Productions inked a deal to bring Jessica Cutler's novel The Washingtonienne to life as a comedy and is creating a TV series based on the life of nightclub queen Amy Sacco.

Parker's also been making fistfuls of money from her non-acting gigs. She signed a three-year $38 million contract to be the face of the Gap in 2004 (but was dumped a year later in favor of the 17-year-old British soul singer Joss Stone). She's also launched two fragrances for Coty—Lovely and Covet—and a line of inexpensive clothes for the cut-rate Steve & Barry's chain called Bitten. Unfortunately, in order to get Bitten by SJP, you'll have to risk catching tourist—the only shop that sells it is in the Manhattan Mall.

Personal

After a string of high-profile boyfriends like Robert Downey Jr., Nic Cage, and John Kennedy Jr., Parker settled down with Matthew Broderick in 1997. Their son, James Wilkie, was born in 2002. (He's named after Broderick's father and Wilkie Collins, one of Parker's favorite authors.) The family lives on Charles Street in the West Village and has a summerhouse in Amagansett. They also have a vacation home in Ireland.