Kyra Sedgwick's Real Name: Kyra Minturn Sedgwick

Quick answer: Kyra Sedgwick's full name is Kyra Minturn Sedgwick. She was born on August 19, 1965, in New York City, and she acts under her first name and surname. Minturn, her middle name, appears in her 1988 New York Times engagement announcement. She played Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on TNT's The Closer, which won her the 2010 Emmy for lead actress in a drama series. She has been married to Kevin Bacon since 1988 (The New York Times; Encyclopedia.com).

Real name and early life

Her Encyclopedia.com biography gives her birth as August 19, 1965, in New York, New York. It says she grew up in New York City as the daughter of a venture capitalist and a speech therapist who later became a family therapist. Her family is an old New England one with roots in America dating to the 1630s. She shared a great-grandfather with model and Warhol associate Edie Sedgwick, making them second cousins.

The New York Times engagement announcement of April 3, 1988, names her as "Kyra Minturn Sedgwick," daughter of Mrs. Ben Heller and Henry D. Sedgwick. It calls her a great-granddaughter of Groton School founder Endicott Peabody and of historian Henry Dwight Sedgwick. She graduated from Friends Seminary in Manhattan, spent a semester at Sarah Lawrence College, and later studied at the University of Southern California.

Career highlights

Sedgwick began acting professionally on the NBC soap Another World in 1982. Her film debut was War and Love (1985). She met Kevin Bacon while filming the PBS American Playhouse production Lemon Sky in 1987. According to Encyclopedia.com, they married on September 3, 1988, and have two children, Travis and Sosie.

Her supporting film roles included Tom Cruise's girlfriend in Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Cameron Crowe's Singles (1992). She earned a Golden Globe nomination as Julia Roberts's sister in Something to Talk About (1995). In 2000 she starred as New York radio host Janey Munro in the short-lived ABC sitcom Talk to Me. Later films included Personal Velocity (2002), a Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Secondhand Lions (2003), and The Woodsman (2004), opposite Bacon.

The Closer debuted on TNT in June 2005 and set a basic-cable ratings record for a scripted series premiere. Her character, a CIA-trained Southern transplant, earned the show's title through her skill at getting confessions. The Television Academy lists her lead actress nominations for the role in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009, and the win in 2010.

Name notes for searchers

Kyra is her given first name, Minturn her middle name, and Sedgwick her family surname. The Times headline shortened it to "Kyra M. Sedgwick." She did not adopt Bacon's surname professionally. Searchers looking for Edie Sedgwick should note that the two were second cousins, not sisters.