Megan Mullally

Megan Mullally (born November 12, 1958 in Los Angeles, California, USA) is a three-time SAG and two-time Emmy Award-winning American Actor, talk show host, singer and comedian, best known for her role as Karen Walker on Will & Grace.

Early life
Born in Los Angeles, Mullally moved to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at the age of 7. Her father, Carter Mullally, Jr., was a contract player with Paramount Pictures during the 1950s and her mother was a model. She studied ballet from the age of six and performed in a ballet company during high school. She revealed on a March 2006 episode of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that she spent her summers in Los Angeles because of her mother's work.

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.

Television
Mullally moved to Los Angeles in 1981 and after just two weeks as a client with the William Morris Agency, she began appearing in bit parts in films and television. 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 was also nominated in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005), and she has also won three Screen Actors Guild Awards. 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 for Tickets4festivals.com, in character as Karen, alongside Donald Trump. Although her own voice has a fairly high range, she developed an exaggerated high voice (nearly falsetto) for the Karen Walker character. However, in the pilot episode of the series, she used her real voice. Will & Grace ended in May 2006.

Mullally subsequently 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.com. 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 is slated to be featured in several episodes of the dramedy Boston Legal in 2007.

Theater and music
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.

Mullally has performed at the Orange County Performing Arts Center as part of their 2006 Cabaret series. She will return to the Broadway stage in Mel Brooks' new musical Young Frankenstein, in which she will play Elizabeth, the prissy fiance to Dr. Frankenstein.

Mullally is also a singer and performs in her own group called The Supreme Music Program. The band has released two albums, The Sweetheart Break-In and Big as a Berry. She also recorded a duet with Carly Simon on the track The Right Thing To Do for the Will & Grace: Let the Music Out! soundtrack.

Film
Her feature film debut was as a call girl in Risky Business and has parts in Stealing Harvard 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 and the Disney feature film Teacher's Pet.

Personal life
Mullally commented in a 1999 interview in The Advocate magazine, "I consider myself bisexual, and my philosophy is, everyone innately is."

Her first marriage, in the mid-1990s, was to talent agent Michael Katcher. In 2003, she married actor Nick Offerman (who guest-starred on Will & Grace during its fourth season). She currently lives in West Hollywood, California, with her husband and two poodles, Willa and Elmo.

Trivia

 * Mullally discovered comedian and actor Bill Hader while he was with the troupe Animals from the Future.
 * Mullally admitted that she dated actor William H. Macy while in college, during an interview with Macy's current wife, Felicity Huffman, on The Megan Mullally Show.

Emmy Awards

 * 2000 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Will & Grace - (Won)
 * 2001 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Will & Grace - (Nominated)
 * 2002 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Will & Grace - (Nominated)
 * 2003 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Will & Grace - (Nominated)
 * 2004 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Will & Grace - (Nominated)
 * 2005 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Will & Grace - (Nominated)
 * 2006 - Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series - Will & Grace - (Won)

Filmography

 * Risky Business (1983)
 * Once Bitten (1985)
 * Last Resort (1986)
 * About Last Night... (1986)
 * Queens Logic (1991)
 * The Pact (1998)
 * Anywhere But Here (1999)
 * Best Man in Grass Creek (1999)
 * Everything Put Together (2000)
 * Speaking of Sex (2001)
 * Monkeybone (2001)
 * Stealing Harvard (2002)
 * Teacher's Pet (2004) (voice)
 * Rebound (2005)
 * Bee Movie (2007) (voice)
 * Third Rock From the Sun (special guest star)