Alicia Witt Biography

Actress Alicia Witt is the redheaded American actress who has been a reliable supporting player in movies and TV for more than three decades.

Alicia Witt started out with a reputation for precociousness: She was home-schooled and received her high school degree at age 14, all the while training and performing as a classical pianist. The child prodigy stories included Witt allegedly writing a letter to Good Housekeeping magazine at age 2 and reciting Shakespeare on TV at age 4.

She caught the attention of David Lynch, who cast her in Dune (1984) and, later, Twin Peaks (1990). Between 1995 and 1998 Witt played daughter Zoey Woodbine in the CBS sitcom Cybill and popped up in feature films such as Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995, with Terrence Howard) and Citizen Ruth (1996). She has appeared in a number of oddball movies, including the John Waters film Cecil B. Demented (2000, starring Melanie Griffith) and the Tom Cruise headscratcher Vanilla Sky (2001, with Penelope Cruz). A reliable supporting player, she has also been in Two Weeks Notice (2002, with Sandra Bullock), The Upside of Anger (2005, with Keri Russell), the 2007 thriller 88 Minutes (starring Al Pacino and Leelee Sobieski), A Madea Christmas (2013, with Tyler Perry) and The Bronx Bull (2014).

On TV she has had recurring roles on the shows Law & Order: Criminal Intent (in 2007-08), Friday Night Lights (2009-11) and Justified (2014), and made many guest appearances on other shows, including a brief ill-fated turn on The Walking Dead in 2016.