photos by LIFE, 1983

"Miss McNichol has carved out a different image from these other girls. On her hit show Family, she played a shrewd, down-to-earth tomboy, a wise-beyond-her-years but still wholesome all-American girl. And that's basically the same character she embodies in her movies. She has none of the nymphetlike sex appeal of Jodie Foster or Brooke Shields; Kristy McNichol is the girl next door, the female cousin to Huck Finn." —Stephen Farber, The New York Times, 1981