Anne Meara

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anne Meara

Born September 20, 1929 (1929-09-20) (age 78)
Queens, New York, US
Occupation Actress, Comedian
Spouse Jerry Stiller
Children Amy Stiller, Ben Stiller

Anne Meara (born September 20, 1929) is an American comedian and actress. She and Jerry Stiller are the parents of actor/comedian Ben and actress Amy Stiller, and were a prominent 1960s comedy team, appearing as Stiller and Meara.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Personal life

Meara was born in Queens, New York, the daughter of Mary (née Dempsey) and Edward Joseph Meara,[1] Irish-born immigrants from a village called Toomevara. Her mother committed suicide when Meara was 11, and she has been in therapy since the mid-1980s. Meara was raised Catholic, but converted to Judaism six years after marrying Stiller.[2] She has long stressed that she did not convert at Stiller's request, but because "Catholicism was dead to me", and she simply came to prefer the more "lively" character of Jewish culture. She took the conversion seriously and studied the faith in such depth that her Jewish-born husband quipped, "Being married to Anne has made me more Jewish."

[edit] Career

Meara has been married to Stiller since 1954. Both were members of the improvisational company The Compass Players (which later became The Second City), and the pair, as the comedy team Stiller and Meara, brought many of their real-life relationship foibles to bear on their often-improvised comedy routines. After some years honing the act, Stiller and Meara became regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show and other TV programs.

During the 1970s, Meara and Stiller wrote and performed many radio commercials together for Blue Nun Wine.

Meara costarred with Carroll O'Connor and Martin Balsam in early 1980s hit sit-com Archie Bunker's Place, which was a continuation of the influential 1970s sitcom All in the Family. She played the role of Veronica Rooney, who was the bar’s cook, for the show's first three seasons (1979-1982). She also appeared as the grandmother in the TV series ALF in the late 1980s. Their career declined, however, as variety series gradually disappeared. Her own 1986 TV sitcom, The Stiller and Meara Show, in which Stiller played the deputy mayor of New York City and Meara portrayed his wife, a TV commercial actress, was unsuccessful. More recently, she has had recurring roles on the television shows Sex and the City (as Mary Brady) and The King of Queens (as Veronica). In the 2004-'05 season, she appeared in an episode of Law and Order SVU.

She is the consulting director of J.A.P. - The Jewish American Princesses of Comedy, a 2007 Off-Broadway production that features live stand-up routines by four female Jewish comics juxtaposed with the stories of legendary performers from the 1950s and 1960s: Totie Fields, Jean Carroll, Pearl Williams, Betty Walker and Belle Barth.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Upcoming

[edit] Television Work

[edit] References

  1. ^ Anne Meara Biography (1929-)
  2. ^ O'Toole, Lesley. "Ben Stiller : 'Doing comedy is scary'", The Independent, 2006-12-22. Retrieved on 2006-12-22. 

[edit] External links