After graduating from Rutgers University, New Jersey, in 1987 with a Fine Arts degree, the twenty-three year old actress put her school and community theater experience to use to become a full-time actress. She took on bit parts in day-time television dramas and role in the TV series Darrow, and the HBO special The Secret Life of Mary Margaret: Portrait of a Bulimic, but it was stage work on and off Broadway and in Chicago and Williamstown theaters that kept her busy and for which she won her first formal acclamations. Her credits include The Loop, All For One, Sophistry, Wrong Turn At Lungfish, Beside Herself, Bovver Boys, The Three Sisters, Our Town and Death Takes A Holiday. It was during The Glass Menagerie run that Flockhart heard of a pilot called Ally McBeal. Her Broadway career was just taking off nicely, and it took “a lot of persuasion” from David Kelly Productions to get the actress to Los Angeles for a reading. She was offered the role after the first meeting, and rocketed to widespread fame.

It is as the confused, romantic, micromini-skirted lawyer, Ally McBeal (1997 - ), that Flockhart has achieved a fan base which includes both critics and at-home viewers -- a fan base so strong that attempts by the tabloids to link her tiny waist to an eating disorder (in an industry in which being thin is almost mandatory!) were vehemently denounced by supporters and denied by the actress herself. Meanwhile, the show continues to be a success, and Flockhart’s movie career, which began, most notably, with a part in The Birdcage (1996), now includes Milk and Money (1997), Drunks (1997), Telling Lies In America (1997), William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999), Like A Hole In The Head (1999) and Jane Doe (1999).