For five years, Calista Flockhart endeared herself to romantics and legal junkies, as the lovelorn Boston lawyer Ally McBeal in the Fox drama of the same name. As Ally, Flockhart managed to fall “head over heels” when encountering the many men of her dreams, and also portrayed emotional instability with ease, which earned her a Golden Globe win in 1998. For her second lengthy encounter with television, Flockhart morphed into Kitty Walker, a strong, capable communications director for Senator Robert McCallister, on the popular ABC drama Brothers & Sisters.

Flockhart hailed originally from Freeport, Illinois, but lived a semi-nomadic life, as the family moved from state to state for her father’s position with Kraft Foods.

She studied acting at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, and after paying her dues as a waitress and aerobics instructor in New York City, she got a theater break in the production Beside Herself with Melissa Joan Hart, as well as a small role on the Guiding Light soap.

Flockhart later graduated to Broadway and aced the roles of Laura in The Glass Menagerie and Natasha in Three Sisters. Along the road to success, she starred in a handful of films, most notably the 1996 comedy The Birdcage, and actor/director Robert Redford’s Quiz Show.

After seven years of shared parenting, with Harrison Ford, of her adopted son Liam, the Hollywood couple announced their engagement. And it looks like Flockhart may be taking a bit of time off from Brothers & Sisters to focus on wedding plans, as word is out that she will be showing up for fewer episodes of the series this season.