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'''Sarah Jessica Parker''' (March 25, 1965- ) is an American actress and producer.

She is best known for her leading role as Carrie Bradshaw on the HBO television series ''Sex and the City'' (1998–2004), for which she won four Golden Globe Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two Emmy Awards. She played the same role in the 2008 feature film based on the show, ''Sex and the City: The Movie'', and in its sequel, ''Sex and the City 2'', which opened on May 26, 2010. Parker has also appeared in many other films.

Sarah Jessica Parker was born in Nelsonville, Ohio, the daughter of Barbara Parker (née Keck), a nursery school operator and teacher, and Stephen Parker, an entrepreneur and journalist. She was one of a total of eight children from her parents' marriage and her mother's second marriage (her full siblings include actors Timothy Britten Parker and Pippin Parker). After her parents' divorce, her mother married Paul Forste, a truck driver and account executive who was a part of Parker's life from an early age. Parker's father, a native of Brooklyn, was of Eastern European Jewish background; his family's original surname was "Bar-Kahn" ("son of Kohen"). Parker's mother was of English and German descent; through her mother, Parker is descended from Esther Elwell, one of the accused during the Salem witch trials. Parker has identified culturally and ethnically with her father's religion, Judaism, although she has had no religious training. And then in recent years she developed an interest in Buddhism, reading books by [[Ajahn Brahm]] and other Buddhist teachers. She has said that even while her family lived in Cincinnati, her mother emulated a New York lifestyle.

Parker is a prominent member of the Hollywood's Women's Political Committee. She is UNICEF's Representative for the Performing Arts; in 2006, she traveled to Liberia as a UNICEF celebrity ambassador. She said, "It's a place that gets little or no attention, so we're going to try and bring some attention to it". She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for the United States. Parker appeared in the premiere episode of the U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are? on March 5, 2010, where she discovered she had ancestors involved in the California Gold Rush of 1849–50 and in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

==References==

* http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=9,7000,0,0,1,0

[[Category:Celebrity Buddhists]]