Kristy Swanson

About Kristy Swanson

Kristen Nöel "Kristy" Swanson (born December 19, 1969) is an American actress. She played Buffy Summers in the 1992 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She has also played Catherine "Cathy" Dollanganger in the movie version of the V.C. Andrews book Flowers in the Attic.

Swanson was born in Mission Viejo, California, to physical education teachers Robert and Rosemary Swanson and graduated from El Toro High School.

Swanson began a relationship with her Skating with Celebrities partner Lloyd Eisler during the show's run, while Eisler was still married to his then-pregnant wife, Marcie. Swanson gave birth to a son named Magnus Hart Swanson Eisler on February 16, 2007, just one month after Lloyd's divorce from Marcia O'Brien was finalized. Swanson married Eisler on February 7, 2009 in San Luis Obispo, California. They currently live in Santa Clarita, California.

Swanson started her career at The Actors Workshop with R.J. Adams and promptly moved into TV advertising roles and several one-off appearances in TV series such as Cagney and Lacey and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1986, she debuted on the big screen in two John Hughes films: Pretty In Pink, in a non-speaking role, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off as a character who announces a convoluted excuse for Ferris' absence in class. Her first starring role was later in 1986, in Wes Craven's Deadly Friend as Samantha – "the girl next door". The next year she played Cathy in the adaptation of V. C. Andrews' best-seller Flowers in the Attic.

By 1990, Swanson had made many television appearances, including multiple appearances in Knots Landing (1987–1988), Nightingales (1989), her first starring role in a TV series, although it only lasted a season, and a short-lived Burt Reynolds television series called B.L. Stryker (1989).