Courtney Thorne-Smith
American actress
Courtney Thorne-Smith (born 1966 or 1967) is an American actress. She is known for her starring roles as Alison Parker on Melrose Place, Georgia Thomas on Ally McBeal, and Cheryl on According to Jim, as well as her recurring role on Two and a Half Men as Lyndsey McElroy.
Early life
Thorne-Smith was born in San Francisco, California. She attended Menlo-Atherton High School, in Atherton, California, but she graduated from Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California, in 1985. She performed with the Ensemble Theater Company in Mill Valley while attending high school.
Career
Films
Thorne-Smith made her first film appearance in the 1986 feature film drama Lucas, alongside Kerri Green, Winona Ryder, Corey Haim, and Charlie Sheen. She was also involved in a number of movies in the late 1980s, such as Welcome to 18 (1986), Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), Summer School (1987), and Side Out (1990). In 1998, she starred in the box office flop Chairman of the Board with Carrot Top. In 2009, she appeared in Sorority Wars.
Television
She appeared on a few mid-1980s television series such as Growing Pains and the short-lived Fast Times, as well as made-for-television movies including The Thanksgiving Promise and Infidelity before landing a regular role in the 1988–1989 sitcom Day by Day with Douglas Sheehan, Linda Kelsey and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
The public source identifies “Courtney Thorne-Smith” as american actress. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Courtney, Thorne-Smith and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q230180. VIAF identifies the subject as 37119964. The Library of Congress control number is no97023085. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1967, 1985 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Courtney Thorne-Smith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.