Holly Marie Combs on AllMovie

An actress since her childhood, Holly Marie Combs appeared in several feature films before becoming a well-known prime time television presence in the 1990s. Born in San Diego, Combs moved to New York as a child with her actress mother. She soon embarked on her own acting career, appearing in TV commercials and studying at the Professional Children's School. Combs made her film debut playing Susan Sarandon's daughter in Sweet Hearts Dance (1988), moving on to small parts in Oliver Stone's second Vietnam saga Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and arthouse favorite Hal Hartley's Simple Men (1992). Combs established herself as an up-and-coming TV actress, though, in the role of Tom Skerritt and Kathy Baker's daughter on producer/writer David E. Kelley's Emmy award-winning family drama Picket Fences (1992-1996). After the series ended, Combs stayed with the medium, starring as Texas teen-killer Diane Zamora in the TV docudrama Love's Deadly Triangle: The Texas Cadet Murder (1997), and as the daughter of a murdered heiress in USA Network's Our Mother's Murder (1997). Combs returned to series TV as grounded middle sibling Piper on producer Aaron Spelling's Charmed in 1998. Co-starring TV vixens Shannen Doherty and Alyssa Milano, the tale of three beautiful, supernaturally endowed sisters appealed to the WB network's young female audience, and Charmed became a hit.