Marley Shelton

Marley Eve Shelton (born April 12, 1974) is an American actress.

Marley Eve Shelton was born on April 12, 1974, in Los Angeles, California, to Carol (née Stromme), a teacher and former singer, and Christopher Shelton, a director and producer.

The second of four daughters, Shelton's sisters are Koren, Erin and Samantha Shelton, who is also an actress and a musician.

Shelton grew up in the residential neighborhood of Eagle Rock, where she attended Eagle Rock High School.

She attended University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied film and theatre, and enrolled in acting lessons with Larry Moss and Robert Carnegie, while supporting her career through mainly small parts in film and television in the early 1990s.

She subsequently appeared in 1992's television movie Up to No Good playing Denise Harmon, and had several guest-appearances in episodes of shows such as Family Matters, Camp Wilder and Crossroads.

She is best known for her roles as Wendy Peffercorn in David Mickey Evans's coming-of-age comedy The Sandlot (1993), the Customer in Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's neo-noir anthology film Sin City (2005), Dr. Dakota Block in Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's double-feature film Grindhouse (2007), and Sheriff Deputy Judy Hicks in two installments of Wes Craven's Scream franchise (2011–2022).

Shelton found her profile raised significantly when she appeared in the 1993 film The Sandlot, playing the lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn.

The movie received mixed feedback from critics and writers and, budgeted at US$7 million, was a box office success with a worldwide gross of over US$33 million.

It has since developed a cult following.

In 1994, Shelton had a supporting part in Hercules in the Underworld, the fourth made-for-television movie in the series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.

The following year, she was cast in a minor role, as former President Nixon's adult daughter Tricia Nixon Cox, in Oliver Stone's acclaimed film Nixon, and guest-appeared in the television series Cybill episode "The Big Sleep-Over".

Shelton next co-starred alongside Lynda Carter in When Friendship Kills (1996), a made-for-television film about anorexia nervosa among teens.

Shelton eventually dropped out of UCLA when she was cast in a leading role in the 1997 adventure film Warriors of Virtue.

Shelton made her on-screen debut as Roberto's girlfriend at camp in Grand Canyon.

1997 saw Shelton appear in the romantic comedy Trojan War, opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt, and in the fantasy film Warriors of Virtue, as Princess Elysia.

Both films rated poorly with reviewers and failed to attract audiences, but James Berardinelli singled out Shelton for her performance in Warriors of Virtue, writing that her character is "the only one in the film that we develop any real interest in, and the script, apparently unable to deal with a personality having the potential to display more than one dimension, discards her perfunctorily and inelegantly".

Her other notable films include Pleasantville (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Sugar & Spice (2001), Valentine (2001), Bubble Boy (2001), and Rampage (2018).

A major film role came in 1998 with the fantasy comedy Pleasantville, in which Shelton portrayed Margaret, the love interest of Tobey Maguire's character.

The movie did not find a wide audience in theaters, but received an extremely positive reaction from critics.

This role was followed by a number of other appearances in films aimed at a teenage audience, including her role as a member of a snobby high school clique in 1999's sleeper hit Never Been Kissed, a romantic comedy co-starring Drew Barrymore and David Arquette.

In 1999, Shelton also played the sister of a newly engaged woman in the unsuccessful romantic comedy The Bachelor, opposite Renée Zellweger, starred alongside Dennis Hopper in the independent drama Lured Innocence, and was cast by her father in the short Protect-O-Man, a black comedy about "an agoraphobic whose disorder is augmented by a stalker on the prowl in her neighborhood", as described by Cinema Review.

Shelton took on significant roles in three feature films in 2001, which despite varying degrees of success, helped her establish herself as an up-and-coming actress.

Francine McDougall's teen crime dark comedy Sugar & Spice, alongside Marla Sokoloff, Melissa George and Mena Suvari, was Shelton's first film as a leading actress.

She played Diane Weston, the head of a group of high school cheerleaders who conspire and commit armed robbery.

Despite negative reviews, Brendan Kelly of Variety found Shelton to be "good" as "the ridiculously peppy but still smart Diane", and Brian Orndorf of Film Fodder wrote: "The star who emerges from Spice unscathed is Marley Shelton. She achieves the unthinkable with this script by managing to create somewhat of a character for herself. A clear-eyed beauty, Shelton steals the film away from the sizable cast. She emerges as the only thing to recommend in the muddled and compromised Sugar & Spice."

Budgeted at US$11 million, the film made US$16.9 million worldwide and became somewhat of a cult favorite afterwards.

In the slasher film Valentine, Shelton appeared opposite Denise Richards as friends who are being stalked by an unknown assailant while preparing for Valentine's Day.

Released one week after Sugar and Spice, the film grossed a modest US$36 million worldwide and was largely panned.

Mick LaSalle for San Francisco Chronicle, nevertheless, felt that the lead actors were "vivid, and the characters they play are clearly delineated", while he pointed out Shelton for having a "nice gravity" portraying her role.

Her final film of 2001 was the comedy Bubble Boy, loosely based on the story of David Vetter, in which she played the love interest of a man living in a sterilized dome (Jake Gyllenhaal).

A CNN reviewer found the production to be "stupid and devoid of any redeeming features", but Orndorf felt that Shelton made a "strong impression with her empathetic performance and her glowing good looks".

After focusing on studio features, Shelton appeared in a variety of independent films —she portrayed a troubled modern dancer in the dark comedy Just a Kiss (2002), with Kyra Sedgwick and Marisa Tomei, the dream girl of a mafia debt collector in the drama Dallas 362 (2003), and the love interest of producer Phil Kaufman in the dramedy Grand Theft Parsons (2003).

Moving Alan, an independent production directed by her father, featured both Shelton and her sister Samantha.

In 2005, Shelton made a brief but notable appearance as The Customer in the opening sequence of the successful film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel Sin City.

In 2006, she played small roles in Paul Weitz's black comedy American Dreamz and Tony Goldwyn's drama The Last Kiss.

Shelton found larger attention for appearing in the lead role of Dr. Dakota Block in the Robert Rodriguez—Quentin Tarantino horror double feature picture Grindhouse, appearing in both of the film's segments (a cameo in Tarantino's segment, and a starring role in Rodriguez's).

Delighted to work on "playing with the ideas of building suspense" with Rodriguez and Tarantino, who she described as "masters of their craft", she based her character in the female leads in Alfred Hitchcock's movies, specifically Tippi Hedren.

The picture's ticket sales were significantly below box office analysts' expectations despite largely positive critic reviews.

In 2008, Shelton had a brief role as one of George W. Bush's girlfriends in Oliver Stone's biopic film W. and took on her first full-time television role in CBS's crime thriller series Eleventh Hour, appearing as FBI Special Agent Rachel Young.