Jennifer Beals (born December 19, 1963) is an American actress and former teenage model. She is known for her roles as Alexandra "Alex" Owens in the 1983 film Flashdance and Bette Porter in the Showtime drama series The L Word. For the former, she received an NAACP Image Award and a Golden Globe nomination. She has appeared in more than 50 films.

Beals was born on the South Side of Chicago, to Jean (née Anderson), an elementary school teacher, and Alfred Beals, who owned grocery stores. She is biracial; her father was African-American and her mother is Irish. She has two brothers, Bobby and Gregory. Her father died when Beals was nine years old, and her mother married Edward Cohen in 1981. Beals has said that her mixed heritage had some influence on her, as she "always lived on the outside," with the thought of "being different in society." She got her first job at age 13 at an ice cream parlor, using her height at the time (she is now nearly 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m)) to convince her boss that she was 16.

Two events inspired Beals to become an actress: participating in a school production of Fiddler on the Roof and seeing The Balm in Gilead with Joan Allen while she was working as a volunteer ticket-taker at the Steppenwolf Theatre.

Beals graduated from the progressive Francis W. Parker School. She was also selected to participate in the elite Goodman Theatre Young Drama Workshop. Beals attended Yale University, earning a Bachelor of Arts in American literature in 1987; she postponed a semester to star in Flashdance. While studying at Yale, Beals lived in Morse College.