Katie Finneran

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Katie Finneran (born January 22, 1972 in Chicago, Illinois) is an Tony Award-winning American film, stage, and television actress.

Raised in Miami, Florida, Finneran attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for one year before moving to New York City at age 19 to study acting with Uta Hagen.

1 Career
2 Trivia
3 External links

[edit] Career

[edit] Film

Finneran's biggest film role was a leading role in the remake of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. Her film credits include You've Got Mail, Chicken Little, Bewitched, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, and Death to Smoochy.

[edit] Television

Finneran is perhaps best known for her role of Sharon Tyler on the critically acclaimed, short-lived Fox television series Wonderfalls. She also was featured as a part of the cast on the Fox show The Inside, also helmed by Wonderfalls producer Tim Minear. She was also featured in CBS's Bram and Alice, as well as guest roles in shows Frasier, Sex and the City and Oz.

[edit] Theater

Finneran has an extensive roster of theater roles. She has often been cast in the "dumb blonde" or ">sexpot<" roles, including a pin-up girl in Neil Simon's Proposals, Sally Bowles in the Tony Award-winning revival of Cabaret, and call girl Cora in The Iceman Cometh opposite Kevin Spacey. She also has appeared in My Favorite Year with Tim Curry and John Guare's Bosoms and Neglect and Smell of the Kill with Kristen Johnson. She won a Best Featured Actress Tony for her role in the revival of Noises Off.

[edit] Trivia

In the DVD for the full series of Wonderfalls, Finneran said that when she was asked if she felt nervous about playing lesbian immigration attorney Sharon Tyler on Wonderfalls that "I'd rather have people think that I'm a lesbian than a lawyer." She also said that to express her confidence that Wonderfalls would be picked up for a second season, Finneran left all of her stuff in Toronto in unmarked boxes. She challenged Wonderfalls co-creator Todd Holland to do the same, but he didn't.
Finneran has often been championed by writers and creative teams at shows. Tim Minear remembered Finneran from Wonderfalls and cast her in The Inside, while Joe Keenan and Christopher Lloyd remembered Finneran's guest role as Poppy on Frasier (in a script they wrote) that they created the Katie character on Bram and Alice for her.
Outside of acting, Finneran has had many "day jobs" to augment her income, including a ringside girl at a boxing ring, waitress, and perfume spray girl at Bloomingdale's.