The Gist
Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline have two children: son Owen Kline, an actor and filmmaker, and daughter Greta Kline, the artist behind indie band Frankie Cosmos.
Cates and Kevin, both actors, raised their children away from Hollywood in NYC.
Today, Owen and Greta both work in creative fields and occasionally act, although neither wanted to fully follow in their parents’ footsteps.
Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline have raised the next generation of talent. The actress and her Oscar-winning husband are the parents of two creative kids: son Owen Kline, an actor-turned-filmmaker, and daughter Greta Kline, a musician.
Cates and Kevin met at an audition for The Big Chill in 1982, but it took a few more years for them to start dating, per People. They tied the knot in 1989, and have been a power couple ever since.
“If your marriage lasts more than six months, you’re already in the Guinness Book of World Records, if you’re a Hollywood marriage,” Kline joked of their union of over three decades in a 2024 interview with Business Insider.
Their first child, Owen, arrived in 1991. Greta was born three years later. Both Cates-Kline children are now in their 30s and have established creative careers of their own. “My family was very artist-friendly, so that was encouraging,” Greta told Interview magazine in 2014 of her journey to becoming a musician. “I took piano lessons for, like, 10 years. Every Friday night, my family had music at our house.”
Despite choosing public-facing careers, Owen and Greta are on the private side like their celebrity parents. Still, the family of four have shared glimpses into their lives over the years. Here’s what to know about Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline’s two kids.
Owen Kline
Owen Kline at the 2026 TCM Classic Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre on May 02, 2026.
Credit: Jesse Grant/Getty Images for TCM
Cates and Kevin welcomed son Owen Joseph Kline on October 14, 1991.
His childhood in New York earned him a kind of alt-darling status—a 2007 New Yorker article referred to him as one of the East Village’s “young moderns” alongside Zoë Kravitz.
In 2005, a 13-year-old Owen starred in the Noah Baumbach drama The Squid and the Whale. But he “never wanted to be in the industry,” he told The Guardian in a 2022 interview. “Being a child actor seemed a hellish path, and a quick way to embarrass yourself,” he explained. Instead, he found himself fascinated by reading and making cartoons and comics—a passion that would inform his feature-length directorial debut, Funny Pages.
“I just thought a story of a cartoonist, in some way, who’s sort of trying to exaggerate a world that gets more and more extreme would be compelling,” he explained to The Guardian. He made Funny Pages after studying illustration and film at NYC’s Pratt Institute.
Owen Kline and mom Phoebe Cates during the NYFCC’s 71st Annual Awards Dinner, January 2006.
Credit: Robin Platzer/FilmMagic
As for his parents’ thoughts on his film career, his comments echo his sister’s. They were “so supportive,” Owen said. “They wanted so badly for me to figure out a way to make my film.”
Since Funny Pages, the filmmaker has continued to participate in the comics scene and returned to acting. He played Nick in 2024 film A Different Man and appeared as himself in Apple TV satirical comedy The Studio in 2025.
Asked in a 2023 chat with CloselyObservedFrames if growing up in an acting family had informed his work, he said, “Not particularly, besides a little bit of a perspective on acting, which is in its essence listening and responding.”
Greta Kline
Greta Kline of Frankie Cosmos poses backstage at Headrow House on September 6, 2016 in Leeds.
Credit: Andrew Benge/Redferns
The Gremlins star and her husband welcomed daughter Greta Simone Kline on March 21, 1994.
Her love of music began in childhood. She told Interview of learning bass from an aunt’s boyfriend, “and my brother would play drums and we’d just make stuff up and ‘rock out.'” She also immersed herself in the local indie scene, with her older sibling taking her along to Brooklyn house shows when she was in her early teens.
Greta opted to be homeschooled halfway through high school to focus on making music, releasing over 200 songs as Frankie Cosmos by the time she turned 22, per W magazine. She attended NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, but left to focus her energy on her burgeoning career. “I kind of felt like I was living a double life,” she explained in her 2016 interview with W. “I was always running to play a show every weekend, so I didn’t make any college friends.”
Greta Kline of Frankie Cosmos performs live on stage during Kilby Block Party on May 12, 2023.
Credit: Jim Bennett/Getty Images
In 2025, Frankie Cosmos (which evolved from a solo project to an indie band in the early 2010s) released the album Different Talking, Greta’s sixth record. One of the project’s main themes is embracing getting older. “I think of aging as a gift—getting to keep being alive, appreciating it every day and ideally getting wiser as time goes by,” Greta told Magnet in an interview promoting the album. “Also, we’re all still quite young!” the frontwoman added.
When she’s performing, it’s a safe bet Cates or Kevin will be in the audience. “My mom always buys way too many tickets – she’s like, ‘Just in case it sells out, I got 10!'” the artist said in her W interview. “And I’m like, ‘Mom, I don’t even have 10 friends!'”
Greta Kline, Phoebe Cates, and Kevin Kline at the NYC premiere of ‘The Conspirator’ in 2011.
Credit: Getty Images
Her band is also expanding its reach. In 2026, Frankie Cosmos wrote and produced the score for indie rom-com Something You Should Know About Me. Greta also has a brief role in the film, made by her friend Andy Fidoten. ” I think acting for me is much lower stakes because I don’t want to be an actor,” Greta told The Indie Scene of being in the film. “There’s no career riding on it, whereas when I make music, it’s representative of my career path.”
Read the original article on InStyle