Moira Kelly (born March 6, 1968) is an American actress. She is known
for portraying Kate Moseley in the 1992 film The Cutting Edge as well
as single mother Karen Roe on the teen drama One Tree Hill. She is
also known for playing the role of Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks: Fire
Walk with Me, replacing Lara Flynn Boyle in the prequel to the 1990 TV
series Twin Peaks. Other roles include Dorothy Day in Entertaining
Angels: The Dorothy Day Story, White House media consultant Mandy
Hampton in the first season of The West Wing, and the voice of Simba's
love interest Nala in The Lion King and its sequels The Lion King II:
Simba's Pride and The Lion King 1 1/2. She also played Hetty Kelly and
Oona O'Neill in Chaplin.Kelly was born in Queens, New York, a daughter
of Irish immigrants. Her father, Peter, was trained as a concert
violinist, and her mother, Anne, is a nurse. Kelly is the third of six
children and was raised in Ronkonkoma. She was brought up as a
Catholic. Kelly attended Connetquot Senior High School in Bohemia,
Long Island, graduating in the class of 1986. Later, she attended
Marymount Manhattan College.In her youth, Kelly was cast in a small
role in her high school's 1984 production of Annie. Due to illness,
the girl playing Miss Hannigan was replaced, causing a series of cast
changes leading to her choice of career. A devout Catholic, Kelly had
to decide between acting and her childhood ambition of becoming a
nun.Kelly made her professional acting debut in the fact-based
made-for-TV movie Love, Lies and Murder, playing teenager Cinnamon
Brown, who was coerced by her father into killing his wife and her
stepmother, Linda Brown. She was originally going to have a starring
role as Polly Pry in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Cannibal! The
Musical, but Kelly was convinced not to do so by her agent out of
concerns it could potentially ruin her career, and was ultimately
replaced with Toddy Walters, though she was still credited in the end
credits under her initials "M.K." as "the Dropout". She went on to
have small roles in the films The Boy Who Cried Bitch, Hi-Life, and
Billy Bathgate before being cast as Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks: Fire
Walk with Me. For that film, she went home and got permission from her
priest because of an explicit sex scene. In the same year, she starred
opposite D. B. Sweeney in the romantic comedy The Cutting Edge and
played two roles opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in Chaplin. According to
a TV Guide interview, before taking on her role in Daybreak, Kelly
once again asked her priest for advice: "Being a Catholic, I wondered
if it would be against my religion to play a girl who has premarital
sex." The priest told her "it was okay, as long as my artistic
intentions were true and I wasn't doing it for the notoriety or the
money."
for portraying Kate Moseley in the 1992 film The Cutting Edge as well
as single mother Karen Roe on the teen drama One Tree Hill. She is
also known for playing the role of Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks: Fire
Walk with Me, replacing Lara Flynn Boyle in the prequel to the 1990 TV
series Twin Peaks. Other roles include Dorothy Day in Entertaining
Angels: The Dorothy Day Story, White House media consultant Mandy
Hampton in the first season of The West Wing, and the voice of Simba's
love interest Nala in The Lion King and its sequels The Lion King II:
Simba's Pride and The Lion King 1 1/2. She also played Hetty Kelly and
Oona O'Neill in Chaplin.Kelly was born in Queens, New York, a daughter
of Irish immigrants. Her father, Peter, was trained as a concert
violinist, and her mother, Anne, is a nurse. Kelly is the third of six
children and was raised in Ronkonkoma. She was brought up as a
Catholic. Kelly attended Connetquot Senior High School in Bohemia,
Long Island, graduating in the class of 1986. Later, she attended
Marymount Manhattan College.In her youth, Kelly was cast in a small
role in her high school's 1984 production of Annie. Due to illness,
the girl playing Miss Hannigan was replaced, causing a series of cast
changes leading to her choice of career. A devout Catholic, Kelly had
to decide between acting and her childhood ambition of becoming a
nun.Kelly made her professional acting debut in the fact-based
made-for-TV movie Love, Lies and Murder, playing teenager Cinnamon
Brown, who was coerced by her father into killing his wife and her
stepmother, Linda Brown. She was originally going to have a starring
role as Polly Pry in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Cannibal! The
Musical, but Kelly was convinced not to do so by her agent out of
concerns it could potentially ruin her career, and was ultimately
replaced with Toddy Walters, though she was still credited in the end
credits under her initials "M.K." as "the Dropout". She went on to
have small roles in the films The Boy Who Cried Bitch, Hi-Life, and
Billy Bathgate before being cast as Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks: Fire
Walk with Me. For that film, she went home and got permission from her
priest because of an explicit sex scene. In the same year, she starred
opposite D. B. Sweeney in the romantic comedy The Cutting Edge and
played two roles opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in Chaplin. According to
a TV Guide interview, before taking on her role in Daybreak, Kelly
once again asked her priest for advice: "Being a Catholic, I wondered
if it would be against my religion to play a girl who has premarital
sex." The priest told her "it was okay, as long as my artistic
intentions were true and I wasn't doing it for the notoriety or the
money."
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