Born Kyra Minturn Sedgwick on 19 August 1965, Kyra Sedgwick is an American actress, producer and director. She is famous for her role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama “The Closer” for which she won a Golden Globe award in 2007 and an Emmys in 2010.
Kyra is also known for her role as Madeline Wuntch on the sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”. She is a highly decorated actor with four decades of acting under her belt. She is married to fellow actor Kevin Bacon, with whom she has been for 33 years.
Almost every entertainer (singer, artiste, actor) has that one project or product for which they are most known. That project or work always associated with their name. The very one that took them from being merely a known personality to full-blown star status. Their magnum opus.
The interesting thing about this is, these famous projects or works are not always necessarily their best. That’s the thing about life. One never really knows how or when it chooses to smile on us. The good thing, however, is that once an entertainer becomes famous courtesy of that famed project, light is shone on their entire career, and people get exposed to more of their work.
More often than not, the name and fame of that ‘breakthrough’ project overshadow anything else an artist has done, however bright a light is shone on them. Kyra Sedgwick has a career of over forty years in the movie industry, and despite her undeniable talent and long list of accolades, her role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama “The Closer”, is what she is mostly known for.
This article looks to shine more light on her illustrious acting career, achievements and her personal life. First, here are ten facts about Kyra Sedgwick.
10 interesting facts about Kyra Sedgwick
- Kyra made her professional acting debut at the age of 15 in the off-Broadway play “Time Was”.
- Barely a year after her acting debut, aged 16, she made her TV debut in the NBC soap “Another World”.
- Kyra met her husband, Kevin Bacon, when they co-starred in the 1988 TV film “Lemon Skya”, they got married the same year, and she was 22 at the time.
- Her daughter, Sosie Bacon, was named Miss Golden Globe 2014 at the year’s edition of the award ceremony.
- Kyra executive produced the film “Losing Chase” in 1996, and it served as her husband’s directorial debut.
- She worked on several independent-film projects during the late ’90s and early ’00s, including the critically acclaimed film “Cavedweller” and “The Woodsman”, both films were released in 2004.
- Her outstanding performance in “Cavedweller” earned her an Independent Spirit Award nod for Best Actress.
- Kyra Sedgwick and her husband, Kevin, lost part of their savings in the Ponzi scheme of swindler Bernard Madoff.
- On 8 June 2009, Kyra was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, receiving a star for her contribution to Television.
- Kyra is currently estimated to be worth $45 million.
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Early life and education
Kyra was born on 19 August 1965 in New York City to Patricia Heller (nee Rosenwald), a speech teacher and educational & family therapist, and Henry D. Sedgwick, an Episcopalian venture capitalist. Kyra comes from a very prestigious lineage and has a large extended family.
Her great grandfather founded the Gorton School, her uncle Ellery Sedgwick was the owner of The Atlantic Monthly, her cousin Edie Sedgwick was the famous muse of the 60s pop artist Andy Warhol, her brother Robert Sedgwick is an actor and her half-brother Mike Stern is jazz artist. She is the niece of writer John Sedgwick, and also an aunt to R&B/pop singer George Nozuka and his younger singer-songwriter brother Justin Nozuka.
Her parents split up when she was only six years old, and she moved to the Upper East Side of New York to live with her mother and stepfather, Ben Heller, an art dealer. Kyra’s mother was a huge theatre enthusiast and had a lot of Broadway celebrities as her friends. Her love for art made her encourage Kyra to take an interest also. When she was 12, Kyra performed for the first time on stage for her school and in a play titled “Fiddler on the Roof”. And so began her journey into the world of acting.
Sedgwick got her high school diploma from Manhattan’s Friends Seminary and then proceeded to Sarah Lawrence College before transferring to the University of Southern California. She graduated with a degree in theatre.
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Career
Kyra’s career started at the early age of 16 when she landed a recurring role in the American television series “Another World”. Over the 10 years that followed, she did small-time television acting, building an impressive resume while at it. In 1985 she secured her first title role in the film “Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale”, and she also got a part in the 1987 TV film “Lemon Sky”.
It wasn’t until 1989 that she got her first big-screen role as a supporting actress alongside Tom Cruise in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July”. The movie gave her publicity, and she began to catch the attention of filmmakers. In the same year, she got a role in Emmy Award-winning TV film “Miss Rose White”, where she played the role of a polish woman who migrates to New York to dodge the Holocaust but had to ultimately face her Jewish heritage to find her estranged sister.
In 1992, Kyra got a big role in Cameron Crowe’s “Singles”, where she played the female lead alongside the likes of Matt Dillon, Bridget Fonda, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, etc. The film proved to be an important learning opportunity in her career. She went on from there to appear in a considerable number of notable and successful projects alongside the best of the best in the industry.
Brenda Leigh Johnson
The role of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson in the TV series “The Closer”, which ran for seven years on TNT, remains the biggest and most famous in Kyra’s career. Her character was a CIA-trained interrogator, who has a reputation as a closer, an interrogator who solves cases, and obtains confessions that leads to convictions.
She sometimes uses deceit and intimidation to persuade a suspect to confess. The show was an instant hit with the audience, and the role made Kyra very popular. It was a commercial success too, and Kyra was earning $30,000 per episode at some point on the show.
The series didn’t fail to deliver laurels to Kyra either. It earned her many nominations and awards throughout the lifespan of the series. She won a Golden Globe for her performance as the lead actress in 2007, and in 2010 she won an Emmys for her role.
Madeline Wuntch
Kyra joined the cast of the TV series “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” in its second season as a recurring character, Madeline Wuntch. She is described as “a callous and unethical NYPD deputy police chief who shared a deep mutual hostility with Captain Holt (a commanding officer). Wuntch and Holt were once partners and friends, but they fell out after Holt rejected her sexual advances and Wuntch gained promotions for which Holt was passed over, resulting in Wuntch eventually becoming Holt’s direct superior. Wuntch constantly went out of her way to undermine the 99th Precinct, and appeared to take great pleasure in its and Holt’s failures.”
