Though born far from the city, deep in the Heart of Dixie, actress Kim Dickens got an ambitious start to her career in film and television as a student at Vanderbilt University, where she made her stage debut in a student production of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago.

Born in Huntsville, AL, Dickens spent much of her active high school career involved with such activities as varsity softball and tennis, the National Honor Society, and receiving such honors as Senior Class Favorite before graduating in 1983. Later earning her B.A. in communication from Vanderbilt University, Dickens also studied at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and is a member of the Open Stage theater company.

Making her feature debut in 1995, with the bumbling crime comedy Palookaville, Dickens spent the next few years acting in such made-for-television movies as Crimes of Passion: Voice From the Grave (1996), before returning to the big screen with Palookaville cohort Vincent Gallo, in Kiefer Sutherland's Truth or Consequences, NM and the 1998 update of Charles Dickens' classic Great Expectations. Bringing in the new millennium with roles in such thrillers as The Hollow Man and The Gift, Dickens took a turn back to the small screen in 2001, for a role in the ambitious but short-lived series Big Apple. The resilient actress bounced back to the big screen again, later that year, with Last Call. Over the coming years, Dickens would appear in a number of films, like House of Sand and Fog, Thank You for Smoking, and Red, as well as TV series like Deadwood, Lost, Friday Night Lights, and Treme.