Claudia Wells

Wells was born on July 5, 1966 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her family moved to the San Francisco Bay area when she was seven weeks old. She went to Marin Country Day School and French-American Bilingual School. As of 2014, some of her family still lived in that area. Wells moved to Los Angeles at the age of 14, later graduating from Beverly Hills High School. She has one brother and a sister named Jennifer.

Wells appeared in ten operas between ages eight and twelve. She began acting in TV shows in the late 1970s. Wells played Jennifer Parker, Marty McFly's girlfriend, in the 1985 film Back to the Future. She almost did not end up in the first film of the successful franchise. According to Wells, she had been cast, but a pilot she had done for ABC had been picked up, and she was contractually forced to drop out of Back to the Future. During that time, Eric Stoltz had been shooting for five weeks in the role of Marty McFly. The producers halted filming and replaced Stoltz with Michael J. Fox. By then, Wells's pilot had been finished and she was recast as Jennifer, now shooting alongside Fox, having never filmed a frame with Stoltz. Also in 1985, Wells co-starred in "Stop the Madness", an anti-drug music video sponsored by the Reagan administration, featuring several famous musicians, actors and athletes. In 1986, she appeared in the TV movie Babies Having Babies, and the short-lived series Fast Times, a TV adaptation of the 1982 film Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Wells played Linda Barrett, portrayed by Phoebe Cates in the film). On December 19, 1991, Wells founded a Studio City, Los Angeles-based clothing store, Armani Wells, which she still owns and manages as of 2024. After her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, Wells put her career on hold for family reasons, and told the studio she would not be available to reprise her Back to the Future role for the two sequels. Actress Elisabeth Shue replaced her. Her mother subsequently died in October 1994. She did not appear again on-screen until the 1996 independent film, Still Waters Burn (released on DVD February 12, 2008).

After a lengthy absence, Wells returned to acting in 2011 with a small role in the independent science-fiction film, Alien Armageddon. The same year, Wells reprised her role from Back to the Future, 26 years after her last appearance in the series; she provided the voice of Jennifer Parker for Back to the Future: The Game. In 2012, Wells announced that her next project would be a horror film titled Room & Board.

When she was 15, she became a born-again Christian and her faith helped her get through her mother's cancer diagnosis and death. Wells has a son, born circa 1995.