Kathleen Quinlan

She was born in Pasadena, California, the daughter of Josephine (née Zachry), a military supply supervisor, and Robert Quinlan, a television sports director, and raised in Mill Valley, California, where she attended Tamalpais High School and studied drama. In her senior year, George Lucas shot American Graffiti at her high school gym and Fred Roos asked her to read for a small part. She played opposite Cindy Williams at the Sock Hop. She was primarily a gymnast and 1, 3, and 5 meter diver in her school years, which led to her being cast as a stunt double for Trish Van Devere's triumphant dive at the end of the movie One is a Lonely Number. She continued both her athletics and drama education at College of Marin until it became necessary to find a way to make a living. She was invited to move to Los Angeles at 19 years old (because of American Graffiti) to try working as an actress.Quinlan had an uncredited role in 1972's One Is a Lonely Number but her official credited film debut was in George Lucas's 1973 movie American Graffiti, at the age of nineteen.

As a young actress in the 1970s, she also had guest-starring roles in many popular television series of the day, including Police Woman, Kojak, Ironside, Emergency!, and The Waltons.

Her most celebrated roles include playing Deborah, a sixteen-year-old schizophrenic, in the film version of the novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, for which she earned a Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama Golden Globe nomination, and portraying Marilyn Lovell, the wife of Tom Hanks's astronaut character Jim Lovell, in the 1995 movie Apollo 13, earning her both a Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture Golden Globe nomination and a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination.

Quinlan also appeared in feature films like Lifeguard (1976), Airport '77 (1977), The Promise (1979), The Runner Stumbles (1979), Sunday Lovers (1980), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Sunset (1988), Clara's Heart (1988), and Trial by Jury (1994). She featured in numerous TV movies as well, including Little Ladies of the Night (1977), She's in the Army Now (1981), Blackout (1985), Trapped (1989), Strays (1991), Last Light (1993), the adaptation of the novel In the Lake of the Woods (1996), Blessings (2003), and more. She played Jim Morrison's Celtic pagan consort Patricia Kennealy-Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors. In 1997, she appeared in Event Horizon (1997) and won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award as Favorite Supporting Actress-Suspense for Breakdown (1997), playing Kurt Russell's character's kidnapped wife.

She had a main role for three seasons on the series Family Law, along with recurring roles as the mother of the two brothers on Prison Break, and in Chicago Fire and Blue. She was in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, plus episodes of many other shows, such as Diagnosis: Murder, Glee, The Event, and House. She appeared in the 2006 remake of the horror classic The Hills Have Eyes, the 2007 film Breach, the 2008 film Made of Honor, and played a senator in "Alliances," a 2011 episode of the science-fiction series Stargate Universe.

As of 2022, Quinlan's recent work includes a 2019 episode of How to Get Away with Murder, a lead role in the film Walking with Herb, filmed in 2018 and released in 2021, and a part in the horror flick The Stairs.