A comely brunette character player, Thompson gave up a ballet career for acting. After appearing in some 20 Burger King commercials, she gained attention in "All the Right Moves" (1983) as the girlfriend of high school football player Tom Cruise. Thompson played three versions of Lorraine (Bates) McFly in "Back to the Future" (1985), rose above lackluster material in "Howard the Duck" (1986, directed by husband Howard Deutch), and demonstrated her ability to play more complex characters in "The Wizard of Loneliness" (1988). She demonstrated her dramatic range and brought grit to the role of a
Danced professionally and studied on scholarship with such companies as the Pennsylvania Ballet, the San Francisco Ballet and the American Ballet Theater's second company, Ballet Repertory
