Phoebe Cates was in lots of movies, like “Gremlins” and “Drop Dead Fred,” but everyone knows her best for that famous scene where she swims topless in the pool in the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” from 1982.
But Phoebe Cates, the actress, left Hollywood more than 20 years ago. Now, she works a regular 9-to-5 job doing something she loves.
Phoebe Belle Cates was born on July 16, 1963, in New York City. When she was young, she went to private schools and learned ballet at Julliard.
Acting ran in Phoebe’s family. Her dad, Joe Cates, was a producer-director, and her uncle was a big deal in the Director’s Guild. Even her brother and sister were involved in acting.
Phoebe started with dancing, but a knee injury made her stop. At 14, she switched to modeling and did pretty well. She was even on the cover of Seventeen magazine four times. But she didn’t enjoy it much and only did it for the money.
Then, at a party at New York’s Studio 54, she met her film agent. After that, she got training from Robert Ravan, who started The Actors’ Circle in New York.
“I just knew that I didn’t want to go to college. And that it would be a great way getting out of college if I could get a couple of movies or something. Seriously. It’s true,” she told The Daily Item in 1985.
Cates also learned acting with Alice Spivack of the H.B. Studios and started acting in 1982 in a movie called Paradise. Less than a year later, she was in another movie called Experienced, and then the famous Fast Times at Ridgemont High with the legendary swimming pool scene.
That movie was really popular with teenagers and became a big part of pop culture. There’s this one scene in it that’s super famous – Rolling Stone magazine called it “the most memorable bikini-drop in cinema history.”
In 1982, Phoebe gave her opinion on it. “In this business, if a girl wants a career, she has to be willing to strip. If you’ve got a good body, then why not show it?,” she said.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High had some big names in it. People like Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Eric Stoltz, and Forest Whitaker were in it.
“Well, it was a funny thing because we were all so young when we made it. And then it came out and it was this big hit, you know, where you’d go to the theater and people would say the lines with it, and people had obviously seen the movie over and over again,” Jennifer Jason Leigh told The Daily News.
After that, Phoebe was in more movies like Private School in 1983 and Steven Spielberg’s Gremlins in 1984. She met Kevin Kline, a famous theater actor, while trying out for a movie called The Big Chill in 1983. Even though she didn’t get the part, she eventually married him.
Kline was 16 years older than Cates, but they didn’t start dating until two years later. After Kline hired Cates’ former assistant, he asked the employee to help him ask out the actress.
Shutterstock
In 1989, when Cates was 25 and Kline was 41, they got married in New York City. Their first child, Owen Joseph, was born in 1991, and their daughter, Greta Simone, was born in 1994.
In 2017, they celebrated 27 years of marriage, and many people wondered how they stayed happy together for so long.
“We take care of the marriage,” Kline said.
Even though Cates was successful in acting, she decided to stop acting after having their children. In the 1990s, she started to disappear from the entertainment industry.
In 1998, she told Playboy that she and her husband agreed to take turns with acting jobs so that one of them was always with their kids.
Shutterstock
Kline would say that when it was Cates’s turn to work, she’d choose to stay home with the kids. Though she did some acting now and then, she started showing up more at fancy events with her husband, who kept acting regularly.
Then in 2005, Cates opened a store called Blue Tree near Carnegie Hall. They sold things like perfume, clothes, and gifts.
Cates put all her energy into running the store full-time. She’d often be there herself, working or finding new stuff to sell. Today, you can find Phoebe’s store at 1283 Madison Avenue in New York City. It’s in the Upper East Side where she also lives.
And just so you know, Phoebe still looks fantastic!
Phoebe Cates attends the 71st Annual Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall on June 11, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)
