Jenny Wright

Lissome blonde actor who began in supporting roles as ingenues and later played several earnest leading lady parts in mostly routine films. Wright studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute and with teachers including Stella Adler. A New York native, she lived for a time with her family upstate but returned to Manhattan as a teen and found work in off-Broadway theater. Wright made her film debut in "The World According to Garp" (1982) and for a time seemed posed to enter the "brat pack" gang of young actors reaching for stardom in the mid-1980s. She played the modest-sized role of Rob Lowe's wife in one of that group's signature films, "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985), but Wright's subsequent credits have received variable exposure.

One of Wright's best parts was as a female vampire with a fondness for young cowboys in Kathryn Bigelow's intelligent and handsomely wrought horror entry, "Near Dark" (1987). Some of her other films have received precious little exposure, such as the uneven but sometimes engaging oddity, "Twister" (1989), and the "thirtysomething" ensemble comedy-drama, "Queen's Logic" (1991). As one of the few women in the cast of the so-so sequel, "Young Guns II" (1990), Wright at least had a good exit scene. "The Lawnmower Man" (1992), meanwhile, found the lovely actor in a big hit, but soft-pedaled her role as the lover of a man used as a guinea pig in virtual reality experiments in favor of flashy special effects.