Calista Flockhart

Calista Kay Flockhart (born November 11, 1964) is an American actress, known for playing the title role in the Fox television comedy-drama series Ally McBeal and for playing Kitty Walker McCallister on the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters. Since 2015 she has been cast as Cat Grant on CBS's Supergirl. During her career, she has received a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and three Emmy Award nominations.

Early life

Calista Flockhart was born in Freeport, Illinois, the daughter of Kay, an English teacher, and Ronald Flockhart, a Kraft Foods executive. Her parents are retired and live in Morristown, Tennessee. She has one older brother, Gary. Her mother, Kay Calista, reversed her own first and middle names in naming her Calista Kay.

Because her father's job required the family to move often, Flockhart and her brother grew up in several places including Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Norwich, New York. As a child, she wrote a play called Toyland which she performed to a small audience at a dinner party.

Ally McBeal

Ally McBeal is an American legal comedy-drama television series, originally aired on Fox from September 8, 1997 to May 20, 2002. Created by David E. Kelley, the series stars Calista Flockhart in the title role as a young lawyer working in the fictional Boston law firm Cage and Fish, with other young lawyers whose lives and loves were eccentric, humorous and dramatic. The series placed #48 on Entertainment Weekly's 2007 "New TV Classics" list.

Overview

The series, set in the fictional Boston law firm Cage and Fish, begins with main character Allison Marie "Ally" McBeal joining the firm (co-owned by her law school classmate Richard Fish, played by Greg Germann) after leaving her previous job due to sexual harassment. On her first day Ally is horrified to find that she will be working alongside her ex-boyfriend Billy Thomas (Gil Bellows)—whom she has never gotten over. To make things worse, Billy is now married to fellow lawyer Georgia (Courtney Thorne-Smith), who also later joins Cage and Fish. The triangle among the three forms the basis for the main plot for the show's first three seasons.

Ally McBeal (season 3)

The third season of the television series Ally McBeal commenced airing in the United States on October 25, 1999, concluded on May 22, 2000, and consisted of 21 episodes. The entire season originally aired Mondays at 9pm, just like the seasons before.

A month before the premiere of the season, Fox began airing Ally, a half-hour show that consisted of re-edited scenes from the first two seasons and previously unseen footage, with the intention of making it a sitcom. 13 episodes of the show were shot, but only 10 were broadcast.

It was released on DVD as a six disc boxed set under the title of Ally McBeal: Season Three on October 7, 2002, just like the two seasons that aired before and in the U.S. on December 22, 2009.

The third season had an average rating of 12.3 million viewers in the United States and was ranked #39 on the complete ranking sheet of all the year's shows. This was the second highest rated season of Ally McBeal.

On the 52nd Primetime Emmy Awards, the show won an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy Series or a Special for the season premiere episode Car Wash.

Ally McBeal (season 4)

The fourth season of the television series Ally McBeal commenced airing in the United States on October 12, 2000, concluded on May 21, 2001, and consisted of 23 episodes. The entire season originally aired Mondays at 9pm, just like the seasons before.

It was released on DVD as a six disc boxed set under the title of Ally McBeal: Season Four on February 10, 2002, and this was the very first season of Ally McBeal to be released on DVD.

The fourth season had an average rating of 12.0 million viewers in the United States and was ranked #40 on the complete ranking sheet of all the year's shows. This was the third highest rated season of Ally McBeal.

On the 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards, the show won its final two Emmys in the categories of Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series for the work of Nikki Valko and Ken Miller, and in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, for Peter MacNicol's portrayal of John Cage. On the 58th Golden Globe Awards, Robert Downey, Jr. won an award for his portrayal of Larry Paul and got a standing ovation as he approached the stage.

List of Ally McBeal episodes

Ally McBeal is a comedy-drama television series created by David E. Kelley, premiered on September 8, 1997 on FOX network in the United States and ended on May 20, 2002. The show spans five seasons of 112 episodes. The episodes were approximately 45 minutes long excluding commercials. FOX decided to cancel the series due to a significant ratings drop in the final season, caused by the introduction of various new characters and the departure of cast members in the previous season.

All seasons of Ally McBeal were released on DVD in the region 2 in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Until fall 2009, only several episodes of the first season of Ally McBeal were available in the United States, due to music rights issues. On October 6, 2009, Fox released a 6-disc set of all 23 season-one episodes, with their original music.

Ally McBeal follows an eccentric lawyer, Allison Marie "Ally" McBeal, and her group of friends from work, focusing on their personal and romantic lives, as well as their business cases which would often contrast or reinforce a character's drama. The series starred Calista Flockhart as Ally, Greg Germann as Richard Fish, Jane Krakowski as Elaine Vassal, Peter MacNicol as John Cage, Lisa Nicole Carson as Renée Raddick, Portia de Rossi as Nelle Porter, Lucy Liu as Ling Woo, Gil Bellows as Billy Thomas, Courtney Thorne-Smith as Georgia Thomas, Vonda Shepard as herself, Robert Downey Jr. as Larry Paul, and many others.

Ally McBeal (character)

Allison Marie "Ally" McBeal is the central fictional character in the Fox series Ally McBeal played by Calista Flockhart.

Ally is a Boston-based lawyer. She is portrayed as fighting for her client, wearing sexy miniskirts, and being self-reliant. She is shown as a woman who believes in love and is continually looking for her soul mate. She often hears songs in her head and experiences hallucinations, mostly of a dancing baby, due to her biological clock ticking and of sexual endeavors with various men.

Biography

Ally is the daughter of George McBeal (played by James Naughton), also a lawyer, and Jeannie McBeal (played by Jill Clayburgh). She claims to have at least one sister and one brother although neither are ever seen (not even in the occasional flashbacks). She used to have a sister who died at the age of five.

Ally attended Harvard Law School with Billy Thomas (played by Gil Bellows), with whom she had had a relationship since they were eight years old so that she could be with him. Billy, however, left Harvard to attend University of Michigan Law School, thereby breaking Ally's heart. The next thing the audience knows about Ally is that she lives with district attorney Renée Radick, and she is employed in a Boston law firm.

Songs from Ally McBeal

Songs from Ally McBeal is an album by Vonda Shepard released in 1998 as a soundtrack for the American television series Ally McBeal.

It reached number three in the UK Albums Chart, number one in Australia, and was a success in the US, Canada, and many European countries as well. The song "Searchin' My Soul", co-written by Shepard with Paul Gordon, which had been featured on one of Vonda Shepard's previous albums, was rerecorded and used as the Ally McBeal theme tune, The majority of the songs, however, are covers of old songs whose lyrics reflected what was happening in Ally's life onscreen.

It peaked No. 1 in Spain for a month in the summer of 1999, thanks to airplay, Vonda Shepard playing shows in Madrid and Barcelona and the TV series; it went on to sell more than 500,000 copies. It is a gold record in Poland.

Track listing