Though she'd always harbored a hankering to become an actress, Kate Capshaw put these plans in mothballs to earn a master's degree in special education at the University of Missouri. She taught exceptional-ed classes for two years before finally heading to New York to seek out acting jobs. She played small roles in commercials and soap operas, then in 1982 made her film bow in A Little Sex. Two years later, she was cast as the heroine in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and while playing the female character in the "Indiana Jones" series, she met producer/director Steven Spielberg , whom she would eventually marry in 1991. Capshaw's roles (and her acting) improved with each subsequent film; in 1995 she was showered with critical acclaim for her performance in the succes d'estime How to Make an American Quilt. In addition to her theatrical-film work, Kate Capshaw has been seen in such made-for-TV movies as Missing Children: A Mother's Story (1982), Her Secret Life (1987) and Showtime's Duke of Groove (1996); she was also a regular on the incredibly brief 1993 series Black Tie Affair.