Please Rewind Talent Wall

Alexa Kenin

Alexa Kenin built a compact but varied career across film, television and theatre, bringing an alert, youthful presence to stories about teenagers finding their footing. Born in New York City on February 16, 1962, she began acting as a child and earned her first professional role in the 1972 holiday television special The House Without a Christmas Tree, starring Jason Robards and Lisa Lucas. Her early work moved easily between stage and screen. In 1977, Kenin appeared in John Guare’s Landscape of the Body at The Public Theater and in the off-Broadway production Elusive Angel. She followed those performances by playing David Janssen’s daughter in the 1978 television miniseries The Word. After moving to Los Angeles with her mother at 17, Kenin attended Beverly Hills High School while continuing to act. Television remained an important part of her career. She was cast in the short-lived 1979 CBS sitcom Co-Ed Fever, appeared in several episodes of ABC Afterschool Special, and guest-starred on The Facts of Life and Gimme a Break! in 1982. That same year, she appeared opposite Bette Davis in the television film A Piano for Mrs. Cimino. Kenin’s film roles placed her in several distinctive coming-of-age stories. She co-starred with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O’Neal in the 1980 teen comedy Little Darlings. In Clint Eastwood’s Honkytonk Man, she played an aspiring young singer traveling toward Nashville, a role that drew on both vulnerability and determination. She also continued working onstage, portraying Libby in a 1980 touring production of Neil Simon’s I Ought to Be in Pictures. Kenin died in 1985, leaving behind a career that had already crossed childhood television, New York theatre, sitcoms and feature films. One of her final roles was in John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink, released in 1986 after her death.