Teri Polo
American actress
Theresa Elizabeth Polo (born June 1, 1969) is an American actress. She starred as Pamela Martha Focker in the Meet the Parents franchise, Helen Santos in The West Wing, Christine Daaé in Phantom of the Opera (1990), and played the role of police officer Stef Adams Foster in the Freeform series The Fosters (2013–2018) and its spinoff Good Trouble (2019–2024).
Early life
Theresa Elizabeth Polo was born on June 1, 1969, in Dover, Delaware, to Jane (née Gentry), a homemaker, and Vincent Polo, a stereo systems designer. She is of Italian, English, and German descent. She studied ballet for 13 years beginning at age six. By age 13, she was attending New York's School of American Ballet. After winning a modeling contest, she moved to New York City at age 17 to pursue an acting career.
Career
Polo's acting debut, in 1987, was in the role of Kristin Larsen on the ABC daytime soap opera Loving. The following year, she earned a role in primetime on the short-lived CBS series TV 101. She also starred in the 1990 miniseries The Phantom of the Opera as Christine Daaé.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Teri Polo” as american actress. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q236300. VIAF identifies the subject as 74074936. The Library of Congress control number is no2002074560. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1990, 2013 and 2018.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Teri Polo”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Teri Polo primary sources, Teri Polo archive and Teri research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Teri Polo”?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Teri Polo” 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.