Jennifer Beals Has Done a Lot Since 'Flashdance' — See What the Stunning Star Has Been Up To
Jennifer Beals gave one of the most memorable performances of the '80s when she played Alex Owens, the welder by day and dancer by night at the heart of the stylish 1983 blockbuster Flashdance.
Beals brought charisma and likability to a role that, on paper, could've been totally cliche. While she notoriously didn't do most of her own dancing for the movie (the dance sequences were largely performed by body doubles) she captivated audiences with her believable depiction of a spirited young woman forging her own creative path.
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Flashdance gave Beals her star-is-born moment (40 years later, everyone still remembers her posing seductively in her cut-off gray sweatshirt), and served as her very first credited role. Prior to that, her only role was an uncredited bit part in the 1980 film My Bodyguard. There was much competition for Flashdance and she beat out another rising starlet, Demi Moore, for the part.
After Flashdance, Beals continued to act, racking up dozens of credits. Here's what she's been up to since her '80s it girl days.
After Flashdance
Jennifer Beals deferred a term at Yale so she could star in Flashdance. After she finished filming it, she returned to the Ivy League school to finish her studies, earning a degree in American Literature in 1987.
Beals never had grand ambitions to be an actress, but once she was in Flashdance, she discovered she really enjoyed being in front of the camera, saying, "I didn’t even feel like I wanted control or impact. I wanted joy, full stop. It was completely pleasure principle: ‘This is fun. I enjoy this. And I can feel myself expanding — it’s really exciting and totally terrifying.'"
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Her next movie after Flashdance was The Bride, a 1985 take on Frankenstein that flopped at the box office. She then played a sexy vampire in the 1988 movie Vampire's Kiss. In 1992, she appeared in the indie movie In the Soup, directed by her then-husband, Alexandre Rockwell.
Beals' best known movie of the '90s was Devil in a Blue Dress, a 1995 '40s-set neo-noir in which she starred as a biracial woman passing for white opposite Denzel Washington. The role hit close to home for the actress, as she was born to a Black father and a white mother, and has been candid about some of the challenges she faced growing up mixed-race, saying she was "acutely aware that I was different" from a young age.
Ultimately, Beals said that while she dealt with discrimination in the industry, "I could always navigate it. I don’t know if that’s just because I was conditioned to navigate it. But I always could. It just made me determined to work even more."
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That work ethic and refusal to be bogged down by the prejudices of others paid off throughout her career, and 20 years after Flashdance, she landed one of her most beloved roles, as the star of the trailblazing show The L Word. She won acclaim for her performance as Bette Porter, an affluent mixed-race lesbian navigating various personal dramas, and the show ran from 2004 to 2009.
Beals called The L Word "the gift that keeps on giving in my life," and she reprised her role for the sequel series, The L Word: Generation Q, which ran from 2019 to 2023. She also served as an executive producer on the show. Being on The L Word led Beals to become a passionate advocate for gay rights, and she's been an ally to the community ever since the show first aired.
After The L Word, Beals appeared in movies like The Book of Eli (2010), Full Out (2015), Before I Fall (2017) and After (2019) and had multi-episode roles on Lie to Me (2009-2010), The Chicago Code (2011), Proof (2015), The Night Shift (2016-2017), Taken (2017-2018) and other shows.
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What Jennifer Beals is doing now
Beals' most recent project was The L Word: Generation Q. She joined the Star Wars universe, with a role in the miniseries The Book of Boba Fett from 2021 to 2022. In 2022, she also had a five-episode arc in Law & Order: Organized Crime, and her most recent movie was the Netflix thriller Luckiest Girl Alive that same year.
Long after Flashdance, Beals is the epitome of aging gracefully, and remains talented as ever. While she'll always be known for the '80s classic, she's proven that she's more than just Alex Owens, and we look forward to seeing whatever she does next — whether it's sci-fi, gay drama or something else entirely.
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