Daughter of a law professor at Northwestern, she moved with her family to Los Angeles when he transferred to UCLA. She began acting in school plays at North Hollywood High, graduated from The Oakwood School and then continued her stage training at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and the Juilliard School of Dramatic Art in New York. Following a pleasant screen debut in Robert Redford's Oscar-winning Ordinary People, McGovern gave a great performance as Evelyn Nesbit in Ragtime for which she earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. She has continued performing on stage between film assignments rather than concentrate on being a film star.



Her younger sister Cammie McGovern is a novelist, whose latest novel [2006] is "Eye Contact." As a young actress on the New York stage, McGovern was required in one play to pray over some candles that were set on a bed. Realizing that the bed had caught fire halfway through her monologue, McGovern kept talking while trying to pat out the flames. She thought she had the situation pretty well under control, when firefighters suddenly arrived onstage to clear the theater. Was engaged to Sean Penn after falling in love on the set of Racing with the Moon (1984). Sings and plays guitar in her own band "Sadie And The Hotheads".