Lea Thompson

Mikhail Baryshnikov told her she was 'too stocky' to dance professionally. She was 20, had graduated high school at 16 to dance full-time, and had been performing with ABT II. The rejection freed her to pivot to acting, and within five years she was playing the romantic lead in the highest-grossing film of 1985. Back to the Future made her famous partly because the part was technically two roles: a teenager and the adult version of the same woman. Red Dawn and All the Right Moves got her in the room; Lorraine McFly made her a household name.

She spent the back half of her career proving she wasn't just an 80s relic. Caroline in the City ran four seasons on NBC's prime Thursday block between Seinfeld and ER, which is a specific kind of pressure most sitcom actors never face. She started directing TV episodes in the mid-2000s and built a resume that includes Star Trek: Picard, The Goldbergs, and Resident Alien. Her 2017 feature directorial debut played Tribeca. Daughter Zoey Deutch has become one of the more interesting young actresses working right now, which keeps the Thompson name in the conversation.

She met her husband Howard Deutch while filming Some Kind of Wonderful in 1986 (he directed; she starred), married him in 1989, and has stayed married over 35 years. Their daughters Madelyn and Zoey both became actresses, and when Lea made her directorial debut in 2017, she cast both of them in it. The Year of Spectacular Men premiered at Tribeca. Before all that, she competed on Dancing with the Stars in 2014 and got eliminated in the quarterfinals, which is either a comeback move or a farewell lap depending on your view.