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Courtney Thorne-Smith (born November 8, 1967) is an American actress. She is best known for her portraying of Alison Parker on Melrose Place, Georgia Thomas on Ally McBeal, and Cheryl in According to Jim.

Personal life

She was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Menlo Park, a suburb south of the city. Her father, Walter Smith, was a computer market researcher and her mother was a therapist. They divorced when she was 7, and she lived with both at different stages. Courtney attended Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, California, and graduated from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California, in 1985. She also performed with the Ensemble Theater Company in Mill Valley while attending high school.^[1]

In June 2000, Courtney married a genetic scientist named Andrew Conrad, but they divorced in January 2001. After meeting him on an airplane, she married Roger Fishman on January 1, 2007.^[2] On January 11, 2008, Courtney gave birth to their first child, a baby boy named Jacob 'Jake' Emerson Fishman.^[3]

Career

Courtney made her first film appearance in the 1986 feature film drama Lucas alongside Winona Ryder, Corey Haim, and Charlie Sheen. She was also involved in a number of movies in the late 1980s, such as Summer School (1987), Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), Side Out (1990), and Chairman of the Board (1998).

Courtney's celebrity, however, came more from performing on television. She appeared on a few mid-'80s television shows such as Growing Pains and the short-lived Fast Times, as well as made-for-TV movies including The Thanksgiving Promise and Infidelity before landing a regular role in the short-lived sitcom Day by Day with Douglas Sheehan, Linda Kelsey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. In 1990, she was featured in six episodes of the popular TV series LA Law as Kimberly Dugan.

Her first notable starring television role was as Alison Parker on the nighttime drama Melrose Place from 1992–1997. She also went on to play Georgia Thomas on Ally McBeal from 1997–2000. In 1999, she became a spokeswoman for Almay cosmetics, being the face of their new line of make-up "Skin Stays Clean." Courtney left the Ally McBeal show because she felt pressured to be so thin that her health was in jeopardy, and also wanted to spend more time with then-new husband Andrew Conrad.^[4]

Since 2001, Courtney has starred as Cheryl on the sitcom According to Jim. Her pregnancy was hidden on the show at first, but was written into the plot.^[5]

On September 18, 2007, Thorne-Smith's novel, Outside In, was published by Broadway Books.

References

• Biography page at the Internet Movie Database

External links

• Courtney Thorne-Smith at the Internet Movie Database
• Courtney Thorne-Smith at TV.com