Kristin Landen Davis (also listed as Kristin Lee Davis; born February 24, 1965) is an American actress. She is well known for playing the roles of Brooke Armstrong on Melrose Place (1995â€"1996) and Charlotte York Goldenblatt on HBO's Sex and the City (1998â€"2004). For her role on Sex and the City, she received an Emmy Award nomination in 2004. Her films include Deck the Halls (2006), Sex and the City: The Movie (2008), Couples Retreat (2009). and Sex and the City 2 (2010). In 2014, she made her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in the original stage production of Fatal Attraction.
Early life and education
Davis was born in Boulder, Colorado. She is an only child, and her parents divorced when she was a baby. She was adopted by her stepfather, then-University of Colorado Boulder professor Keith Davis, after he married her mother, Dorothy, a university data analyst, in 1968. She has three sisters from her father's first marriage. Early in her childhood, she and her parents moved to Columbia, South Carolina, where her father served as provost and teaches psychology at the University of South Carolina.
Davis wanted to be an actress from the age of 9, when she was cast in the Workshop Theatre production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Davis lived in South Carolina until she graduated from A.C. Flora High School in 1983. She then moved to New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers University. Davis graduated with a BFA degree in Acting from Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1987.
Career
Television
After graduation in 1987, Davis moved to New York and waited tables before opening a yoga studio with a friend. In 1991, she acted in a couple of episodes of the daytime drama (soap opera) General Hospital. Her big break came in 1995 when she landed the role of villainess Brooke Armstrong Campbell on the nighttime drama Melrose Place. She left the show after one year when producers decided to kill off the character. Davis also had roles in other television series including Friends, Will and Grace and Seinfeld.
In 1998, Davis was cast as Charlotte York in Sex and the City and remained an integral cast member until the series ended in 2004. In 1999, along with the rest of the cast, she was awarded the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of her excellence and innovation in her creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television. She received an Emmy nomination for her role as Charlotte in the final season.
Davis hosted the VH1 show 200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons. In 2005, she starred in a television pilot entitled Soccer Moms in which she and Gina Torres star as suburban mothers who moonlight as private detectives. She starred as Miss Spider in the animated television special Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Kids and its spin-off series Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends and was recently a guest judge on the Lifetime (TV network) program Project Runway.
Films
Davis's films include The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, opposite David Arquette and George Lopez; the Walt Disney film The Shaggy Dog, opposite Tim Allen, and Deck the Halls, opposite Matthew Broderick. She performed in ABC Family channel's Christmas movie Three Days in 2001, and in a commercial for Head & Shoulders shampoo.
Davis appeared in 2008's Sex and the City feature film, under the direction of executive producer Michael Patrick King. In 2009, Davis co-starred in Couples Retreat, a comedy chronicling four couples who partake in therapy sessions at a tropical island resort. Jon Favreau, who also wrote the script, played her husband.
Stage
Davis made her West End debut playing Beth Gallagher in Fatal Attraction at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, in March 2014.
Additional ventures
Shortly after the wide release of the Sex and the City feature film, in June 2008, Belk, the nation's largest privately owned department store chain, announced a partnership with Davis. The arrangement includes a ladies' apparel and accessories line that debuted in 2008 in 125 store locations and online, with eventual plans for expanding availability to other store locations. In Belk's press release about the product line launch, Davis cited her upbringing in South Carolina as part of her inspiration for working with the chain.
Personal life
In 2011, Davis adopted a daughter, Gemma Rose Davis. They reside in Los Angeles, California.
Davis is a recovering alcoholic. She says she was introduced to alcohol early as part of her Southern upbringing: "Alcohol freed me. I was really shy and I didn't know how to come out of my shell. I drank for the same reason I loved acting. I wanted to feel things and express myself and be free. And I'm not naturally that way." She went sober at the age of 22, later stating, "I miss it. You don't go to rehab and then suddenly it goes away."
Davis has been an ambassador for the poverty organization Oxfam since 2004.
During her 2009 visit to Africa, Davis, a lifelong lover of elephants, discovered an abandoned baby elephant and arranged for it to be taken to a wildlife rehabilitation center. In recognition of the attention she has brought to the plight of orphaned African elephants, Davis won the Humane Society's 2010 Wyler Award, which is bestowed on a celebrity or public figure who has made news on behalf of animals.
Filmography
Film
Television
Theatre
References
External links
- Kristin Davis at the Internet Movie Database
- Kristin Davis at AllMovie
- Barnes and Noble biography
- Kristin Davis at Emmys.com
- Kristin Davis on Twitter
