”In this business, if a girl wants a career, she has to be willing to
strip. If you’ve got a good body, then why not show it?” she said.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High had a pretty impressive cast when
you look at it today – it included now-stars like Sean Penn,
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Eric Stoltz, and Forest Whitaker
“Well, it was a funny thing because we were all so young when we
made it. And then it came out and it was this big hit, you know,
where you’d go to the theater and people would say the lines with
it, and people had obviously seen the movie over and over again,”
Jennifer Jason Leigh told The Daily News.
Later, while also working in theatre, Phoebe starred in Private
School as Christine Ramsey in 1983 and co-starred in Steven
Spielberg’s Gremlins in 1984. Phoebe met Kevin Kline, a critically
acclaimed theater actor while auditioning for the 1983 film The Big
Chill. While Cates did not get the role, she did gain an eventual
husband.
Kline was 16 years older than Cates, but they did not start dating
until two years after they first met. After Kline hired Cates’ former
assistant, he asked the employee to help him to ask out the actress
In 1989, Cates and Kline–25 and 41, respectively–married in New
York City. Cates gave birth to their first child, Owen Joseph, in 1991.
In 1994, she had their daughter, Greta Simone.
In 2017, the couple celebrated an impressive 27 years of
marriage, many wondered what kept them so happy and together
for so long.
“We take care of the marriage,” Kline said.
Even though she was doing well at the time, Cates had decided to
take a step away from acting after the two had their children. In the
In the 1990s, she started to vanish from the entertainment industry.
In 1998, she explained to Playboy that both she and her husband
had agreed to alternate acting jobs so that the children would never
be without a parent.
Kline would add that Cates still would choose to stay home with the
children when it was her turn to work. While Cates did some acting
here and there, she began to be seen more at red-carpet events with
her husband, who continued acting more consistently.