Phoebe Cates
Phoebe Cates is an actor, born 1963.
Two films in 1982 fixed Phoebe Cates in place. Paradise was a survival romance built around her; Fast Times at Ridgemont High gave her Linda Barrett, the worldly older friend dispensing confident sexual advice she cannot actually back up. The second made her instantly and permanently famous for one scene, which is a difficult thing to happen at the very start of a career and largely determined what she was offered afterwards.
She was considerably better than the packaging. Kate Beringer in Gremlins is the film's straight face: she delivers a long, absurdly bleak Christmas monologue in the middle of a creature comedy and plays it entirely without irony, which is the only reason the joke works instead of collapsing. Joe Dante brought her back for the sequel and let her run the trick again.
The later work reads as an actress trying to widen the frame. A model in Bright Lights, Big City. An adult being systematically dismantled by an imaginary friend in Drop Dead Fred, a film that is much stranger than its reputation. The title role in Princess Caraboo, a young woman arriving in Regency England claiming to be royalty from a distant island. The Anniversary Party in 2001 is her last feature performance.
Born in New York City in 1963, she left acting for business and founded the Blue Tree boutique in 2005.
Movies (14)
- Bright Lights, Big City (1988)
- Gremlins (1984)
- Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
- Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
- Private School (1983)
- Paradise (1982)
- I Love You to Death (1990)
- Date with an Angel (1987)
- Drop Dead Fred (1991)
- The Anniversary Party (2001)
- Celebrity Nude Revue: Easy 80's Volume 1 (2011)
- Princess Caraboo (1994)
- Shag (1989)
- Bodies, Rest & Motion (1993)
TV (1)
Where to start with Phoebe Cates
Watch Gremlins for her rather than for the puppets. Kate is the film's only fully sincere character, and Cates plays her with a stillness that lets Joe Dante get away with jokes that should not survive contact with an audience.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High is the famous one and holds up better than its reputation, largely because Linda's bravado is written as bravado. Drop Dead Fred is the essential oddity: a broad comedy that keeps sliding into something genuinely upsetting, with Cates doing all the load-bearing work. Princess Caraboo is the most interesting thing she attempted, Bright Lights, Big City the most serious, and The Anniversary Party the quiet, adult, improvised note she went out on. Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Paradise are for completists, in that order.