Phoebe Cates

Cates was born on July 16, 1963, in New York City, to a family of television and Broadway production insiders. She is the daughter of Lily and Joseph Cates (originally Joseph Katz), who was a major Broadway producer and a pioneering figure in television, and who helped create The $64,000 Question. Her uncle, Gilbert Cates, produced numerous television specials, often in partnership with Cates's father, as well as several annual Academy Awards shows. Her father was Jewish and her mother was Catholic. Cates is of Eurasian or mixed European and Asian descent. Her mother was born in Shanghai, China to a family of Chinese-Filipino heritage. Cates's father is American and from Manhattan.

Cates attended the Professional Children's School and the Juilliard School. At age ten, she started modeling, appearing in Seventeen and other teen-oriented magazines. A few years later, she wanted to become a dancer, and eventually received a scholarship to the School of American Ballet, but quit after a knee injury at age 14. She then began a short, successful career as a model. She said that she disliked the industry: "It was just the same thing, over and over. After a while, I did it solely for the money." As a teen model, Cates appeared on the cover of Seventeen magazine four times, first in the April 1979 issue. She appeared within the magazine as well, on the editorial pages in 1979 and 1980.

Dissatisfied with modeling, Cates decided to pursue acting. She was offered her first part in the movie Paradise (1982) after a screen test in New York. She was uncertain about the nudity the role required, but her father encouraged her to take the job.

Paradise was filmed in Israel from March to May 1981. In the film, Cates performed several full-frontal nude scenes and several rear scenes while still a minor (age 17). The movie had a plot similar to The Blue Lagoon. She also sang the film's theme song and recorded an album of the same name. In a 1982 interview, she recalled having trouble with the career change: As a model, she had to be conscious of the camera; but as an actor, she could not. She later regretted being in the film: "What I learned was never to do a movie like that again." She claimed that the film's producers used a body double to film nude close-ups of her character without telling her. According to her co-star Willie Aames, "She will have nothing to do with the film. She's really upset about it. She won't do any promotion with me."

Later that year, Cates starred in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), featuring what Rolling Stone has described as "the most memorable bikini-drop in cinema history". She said that she had "the most fun" filming that movie.

The next year, Cates was in the comedy Private School (1983), co-starring Matthew Modine and Betsy Russell, and where she sang on two songs of the film's soundtrack: "Just One Touch" and "How Do I Let You Know".

In 1984, Cates starred in the TV mini-series Lace, based on a novel by Shirley Conran. She played the role of Lili "to get away from a sameness in her movie portrayals". During her audition, she so impressed the writer that he wanted to hire her on the spot. She struggled with the portrayal of a bitter movie star because, despite her character's vicious persona, she wanted the audience to sympathize with her. She did not read Conran's novel, on which the movie was based because she did not want to have a "fixed image". Her best-known line in the film, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?", was named the greatest line in television history by TV Guide in 1993. She also starred in the sequel mini-series Lace II.

In the summer of 1984, Cates co-starred in the box office hit Gremlins for executive producer Steven Spielberg, the highest-grossing film of her career. She reprised her role of Kate Beringer in the sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch.

In June 1984, Cates made her stage debut in the Off-Broadway play The Nest of the Wood Grouse, a comedy by Soviet writer Viktor Rozov, at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. Cates said that while doing the play she "felt a certain freedom and a certain connection with acting that I had never really felt before". Cates appeared Off-Broadway again two years later in Rich Relations, written by David Henry Hwang, at the Second Stage Theatre. In December 1989, Cates made her Broadway debut in a revival of Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.

In 1988, Cates told an interviewer, "There are simply not that many good parts in film", but that theater had "tons of good women's roles...I think of theater as what I like to do most...I've only felt happy as an actress for about two years. I rarely watch my film work."

Cates continued to appear steadily in films through the early 1990s, usually in supporting roles or in ensemble casts. These include Date with an Angel (1987), Bright Lights, Big City (1988), Heart of Dixie (1989), Shag (1989), Drop Dead Fred (1991) and Bodies, Rest & Motion (1993) (the latter three also featuring Bridget Fonda). The films suffered from mixed to poor reviews and failed to make an impact at the box office.

Cates was set to play Steve Martin's daughter in the successful comedy Father of the Bride (1991), but her pregnancy with her first child forced her to drop out.

In 1994, Cates starred in the fact-based comedy-drama Princess Caraboo (1994) with her husband Kevin Kline. It was Cates' last film before she shifted her focus away from acting to raising her children, Owen and Greta.

In 2001, Cates briefly returned to acting for one film, The Anniversary Party (2001), as a favor to her best friend and former Fast Times at Ridgemont High castmate Jennifer Jason Leigh, who directed it.

In 2015, Cates provided the voice of her Gremlins character Kate Beringer for the video game Lego Dimensions.