Megan Mullally

Megan Mullally
Megan Mullally (born November 12, 1958) is a four-time SAG- and two-time Emmy Award-winning American actress, talk show host and singer, perhaps best known for her role as Karen Walker on Will & Grace.

Mullally was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Martha (n?e Palmer), a model, and Carter Mullally, Jr., an actor who was a contract player with Paramount Pictures during the 1950s. She studied ballet from the age of six and performed in a ballet company during high school.

Following her graduation from Casady School, she attended Northwestern University, where she majored in English Literature and Art History. She became active in local theater and eventually left college without graduating. She worked in Chicago Theater for six years.

Mullally moved to Los Angeles in 1981, after just two weeks as a client with the William Morris Agency, she began appearing in bit parts in films and television, such as Murder She Wrote with Angela Lansbury. She made her series debut in The Ellen Burstyn Show and guest starred in popular sitcoms such as Seinfeld, Frasier, Wings, Ned and Stacey, Mad About You, and Just Shoot Me!

In 1998, she landed the role of Karen Walker, Grace Adler's shrill-voiced, pill-popping, eccentric assistant in the NBC sitcom Will & Grace. She won Emmy Awards in 2000 and 2006 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and has also won three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In addition, Mullally earned four Golden Globe Award nominations for the show. Although she did not win the Emmy in 2005, she did, based on votes from viewers, win the Emmy Idol award for singing the Green Acres theme song, in character as Karen, alongside Donald Trump. Although her own voice has a fairly high range, she developed an exaggerated high voice for the Karen Walker character. However, in the pilot episode of the series, she used her real voice. Will & Grace ended in May 2006.

In 2005, Mullally discovered comedian and actor Bill Hader while he was with the troupe Animals From The Future, bringing Hader to the attention of Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. Following Will & Grace, Mullally hosted her own talk show, The Megan Mullally Show, which was launched in September 2006. The talk show was canceled in early 2007 due to poor ratings.

Mullally was the host of the 2006 TV Land Awards. She has also been featured in advertisements for M&M's candies and the website CheapTickets. Mullally also had a voice cameo as the mother of Neil Patrick Harris' character's mother on a November 2006 episode of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and guest starred on Campus Ladies. She was in one episode of the drama Boston Legal in 2007.

She made her Broadway debut in 1994 in a revival of Grease in the role of Marty, with Rosie O'Donnell and later appeared in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Matthew Broderick. She is heard in the cast albums of both productions. She opened in her own one-woman show, Sweetheart, in Los Angeles in 1999.

Mulally is currently starring in the new Mel Brooks musical, Young Frankenstein as Elizabeth. The role was made famous by Madeline Kahn in the original film. She has received nearly unanimously outstanding reviews and is a serious choice for a Tony Award. She is featured on the cast album and performs Please Don't Touch Me. Her character, Elizabeth, is the wealthy fianc?e of the title character, who breaks her engagement with Frankenstein to marry his monster. Her original co-stars include Tony Award-winners Roger Bart, Sutton Foster, Andrea Martin, and Shuler Hensley. Rehearsals for the production began in June and a pre-Broadway run opened to mixed reviews in Seattle, Washington. The show premiered after previews on November 8, 2007.

Mullally is also a singer and performs in her own group called The Supreme Music Program. The band has released three albums, The Sweetheart Break-In, Big as a Berry and Free Again! She also recorded a duet with Carly Simon on the track The Right Thing To Do for the Will & Grace: Let the Music Out! The third album from the SMP was originally titled The Many Moods.. Vol, 1. however, the title was changed before going to print. The third album, Free Again! was released online on 28th July 2007.

Her feature film debut was as a call girl in Risky Business and has parts in Stealing Harvard, Anywhere but Here and the Martin Lawrence comedy Rebound. She also is a voice actress who has done work on several cartoons, such as the 1990s version The Flintstones, Batman: The Animated Series, King of the Hill, the Disney feature film Teacher's Pet, and the Dreamworks film Bee Movie.