Courtney Thorne-Smith

Courtney Thorne-Smith was born on November 8, 1967 in California to Walter Smith and Lora Thorne. Her father was a computer market researcher while her mother worked as a therapist. She has an older sister, Jennifer. Her parents divorced when Courtney was seven. She went to Menlo-Atherton High School for a few years and eventually graduated from Tamalpais High School in 1985. As a school student she also became involved with the Ensemble Theater Company.

She has been married twice. Her first marriage was to geneticist Andrew Conrad in June 2000. Ill-fated from the very beginning, the marriage ended in a divorce within a few months. A few years later, the actress married Roger Fishman in 2007. Her second husband is the president of the marketing firm the Zizo Group. The couple had a son, Jacob Emerson Fishman, in 2008.

Courtney Thorne-Smith started her acting career when she was in her late teens. She made her film debut with a small role in the 1986 feature film drama ‘Lucas,’ which starred Winona Ryder, Corey Haim, and Charlie Sheen in the main roles. Around the same time, she ventured into television as well, and appeared in the series ‘Fast Times’ as Stacey Hamilton. She also did a few TV movies like ‘The Thanksgiving Promise.’

Her career started flourishing in the late 1980s. Having started off playing sexy sirens in steamy films and TV projects, she gradually began to portray more mature and versatile roles. In the late 1980s she appeared in a number of movies, such as ‘Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise’ (1987), ‘Summer School’ (1987), and ‘Side Out’ (1990).

She started playing the role of Alison Parker, a beautiful woman with a painful past and a bad taste in men, in the primetime soap opera ‘Melrose Place’ that started airing on Fox from July 8, 1992. The show was a major success and ran for seven seasons until 1999. This series also helped establish Thorne-Smith as a household name.

In 1997 she began portraying Georgia Thomas in ‘Ally McBeal,’ a legal comedy-drama television series that originally aired on Fox. The much acclaimed show won the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy in 1997 and 1998. In the late 1990s, Thorne-Smith also appeared in a few movies, including ‘The Lovemaster’ (1997) and ‘Chairman of the Board’ (1998).

In the new millennium, Courtney Thorne-Smith’s career peaked to even greater heights. In the 2000s, she focused mainly on TV roles and did very few films. In 2001, she started appearing in the sitcom