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M E G A N M U L L A L L Y B I O G R A
P H Y
Source: NBC - http://www.NBC.com/
Emmy Award-winning actress Megan Mullally, who plays Karen, Grace’s socialite
assistant on “Will & Grace,” explains what attracted her to the part:
“A lot of times the funniest characters are those who don’t know that
they’ve got it all wrong. Karen is completely confident that her way is the right
way.”
Mullally, who won an Emmy as Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000 and
was nominated again in 2001, believes she inherited her acting ability from her father,
Carter Mullally Jr., who was a contract player with Paramount Pictures in the 1950s.
“I guess I take after my dad; he was always a cut-up around the house,” says
Mullally, an only child who was born in Los Angeles and raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
During high school, Mullally studied ballet and appeared as a soloist with Oklahoma
City’s Ballet Oklahoma. In the summers, she studied at George Balanchine’s
School of American Ballet in New York City. “I realized that my favorite ballet roles
were the ones where I was required to act,” she says. “Having a mad scene and
then dying on stage was the best part.”
As her interest in theater was growing, Mullally studied English and art history at
Northwestern University while appearing in university plays and musicals. She also spent
six years working in Chicago’s theater scene. Mullally relocated to Los Angeles and
won her first regular television role playing Ellen Burstyn’s daughter on the New
York-based The Ellen Burstyn Show. She then began appearing in regular roles on
such series as My Life and Times and Rachel Gunn, R.N., and as a guest
star on Ned & Stacey (where she first met her current co-star Debra Messing).
She also won roles on Seinfeld, NBC’s Frasier, Mad About You,
Wings, Caroline in the City, Dear John and NBC’s Just
Shoot Me, as well as Almost Grown. She recently appeared in Paul
Mazursky’s HBO television movie Winchell, portraying the wife of famed
journalist Walter Winchell (Stanley Tucci).
Mullally has appeared in the feature films About Last Night …, Queens
Logic and Monkey Bone, as well as the upcoming Speaking of Sex,
which stars Bill Murray and James Spader, and the independent feature Everything Put
Together, opposite Rhanda Mitchell.
Among Mullally’s Broadway credits are the hit revival of How to Succeed in
Business Without Really Trying, in which she starred as Rosemary opposite Matthew
Broderick and received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination. She also appeared as
Marty in the revival of Grease, starring Rosie O’Donnell. Recently, Mullally
premiered her one-woman musical, Sweetheart, which enjoyed a sold-out four-week
run in Los Angeles and will be remounted in the future.
Mullally is often a guest
on popular talk shows, including, The Rosie O'Donnell Show, The Late Show
with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and The View.
Recently, Mullally was honored by the Screen Actors Guild with the award for Outstanding
Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series and won an American Comedy Award as
Funniest Supporting Female Performer in a Television Series. In addition, she had received
a nomination from the Television Critics Association for Outstanding Individual
Achievement in Comedy. She lives in Los Angeles and her birthday is November 12. |
