Sarah Jessica Parker was born on March 25, 1965 in Nelsonville, Ohio, to Stephen Parker, a Jewish American businessman, and Barbara, her mother. Her parents were soon divorced and her mother remarried to Paul Forste, a truck driver. She then grew up with her new family, including her seven siblings. At a young age she was trained in singing and ballet and performed in the Broadway production of The Innocents. Through the many times that her family had moved to different locations, Parker developed her career as a child actress. She was educated in School for Creative and Performing Arts, the School of American Ballet and the Professional Children's School, and Dwight Morrow High School.
As with most actors, Parker started with theater. She and her four siblings appeared on a revival of The Sound of Music. She followed this up with the Broadway musical Annie, where she took on the small role of July. In 1982, she bagged the role of the co-lead on the CBS sitcom Square Pegs, which ran for only one season. Her performance, however, was critically acclaimed, earning her subsequent roles in more films, notably Footloose in 1984 and Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with Helen Hunt in 1985. The following year, she was featured in the cult classic Disney sci-fi film Flight of the Navigator.
Parker started out with romantic comedies in 1991 when she appeared in LA Story, gaining positive reviews. The next year, she starred opposite Nicolas Cage in Honeymoon in Vegas, followed by Ed Wood with Johnny Depp, and Miami Rhapsody, another romantic comedy.
In 1997, Sarah Jessica Parker became almost an overnight sensation with the HBO series Sex and the City, where she played Carrie, a writer of a sex-themed column in a newspaper. She started producing the show on its third season and, after five losses, won an Emmy award for her lead role. In 2008, the movie adaptation of Sex and the City was a worldwide hit.