Julia Sweeney

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Julia Sweeney
Born	October 10, 1959 (1959-10-10) (age 48) Spokane, Washington
Medium	actor, actress, monologist, writer, comedian
Nationality	American

Julia Sweeney (born October 10, 1959) is an American actress and comedian who lives in Hollywood, California.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 2.1 Saturday Night Live 2.2 Monologues 2.2.1 God Said Ha! 2.2.2 In the Family Way 2.2.3 Letting Go of God 2.3 Other roles 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Early life

Sweeney was born in Spokane, Washington, the daughter of Jeri, a homemaker, and Robert M. Sweeney, an attorney and federal prosecutor^[1] who made an appearance in her movie It's Pat as a priest. The oldest of five children, she was raised in Spokane, and quickly found a talent for imitating voices and inventing characters. Despite successful appearances in high school plays, she decided to put acting aside to pursue economic studies at the University of Washington where she became a member of Delta Gamma sorority. After graduation, Sweeney moved to Los Angeles where she worked at various odd jobs, and as an accountant for Columbia Pictures and United Artists, before turning her attentions again to acting.

[edit] Career

In 1988, while still working as an accountant, Sweeney enrolled in classes with the improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings, eventually being selected to be part of the troupe's Sunday Company. It was at The Groundlings that she began to develop personae she would later bring to the stage, film, and television. They include Mea Culpa, the title character of Mea's Big Apology (co-written by then-husband Stephen Hibbert), which won the Best Written Play Award from L.A. Weekly in 1988 and has been developed by Sweeney (in collaboration with Jim Emerson) into a screenplay; and the androgynous Pat, whose impossible-to-determine gender was the basis for Sweeney's popular It's Pat! skits on Saturday Night Live, and later for her feature film of the same name.

[edit] Saturday Night Live

At a Groundlings performance in 1989, Saturday Night Live (SNL) producer Lorne Michaels discovered Sweeney and offered her a spot as one of SNL's featured players. She joined the regular SNL cast the following year and remained with the show through four seasons, from 1990 to 1994.

Sweeney's 1993 impression of Chelsea Clinton caused somewhat of a stir when Hillary Clinton found it offensive and sent an angry letter to SNL's Studio 8H.

[edit] Monologues

Sweeney has created and performed three autobiographical monologues, God Said Ha!, In the Family Way, and Letting Go of God.

[edit] God Said Ha!

After leaving the cast of Saturday Night Live, Sweeney returned to Los Angeles where, shortly afterwards, her career was put on hold by a series of personal traumas. Her brother Michael was diagnosed with lymphoma, and shortly thereafter Sweeney discovered that she had cancer, too. Following the ordeal, Sweeney began to tell of her experience in serio-comic performances at L.A.'s alternative comedy club, the "Un-Cabaret", eventually developing the stories into a one-woman stage show, God Said Ha!, which debuted at San Francisco's Magic Theater in 1995.

Sweeney's unusually candid, humorous, and moving treatment of her painful and personal story won her a large new audience. God Said Ha! moved to Broadway, winning the 1996 New York Comedy Festival's Audience Award, and a CD recording of the show earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album that same year. Miramax released a film version of the show in 1998, directed by Sweeney and produced by Quentin Tarantino. The film earned the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle Film Festival. It was released on DVD in 2003.

[edit] In the Family Way

Sweeney's second monologue chronicled the adoption of her daughter from China. In the Family Way started on stage in NYC in early 2003 at the Ars Nova Theatre. The show was directed by the esteemed Broadway stage director, Mark Brokaw. The show then migrated to the Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles. Sweeney has also released a CD recording of In the Family Way , and in 2006 she performed a twenty-five minute excerpt of this show at the Hollywood Bowl with a new orchestration written especially for her piece by the composer Anthony Marinelli and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

[edit] Letting Go of God

Sweeney's third autobiographical monologue is entitled Letting Go of God. In it, she discusses her Catholic upbringing, early religious ideology, and the life events and internal search that led her to believe that the universe can function on its own without a deity to preside over it.

She work-shopped the show in small theaters and clubs around Los Angeles for three years and then opened it at the Hudson Backstage Theater in October of 2004. The show garnered great reviews and ran for ten months. In June of 2005, it gained a much larger audience when an excerpt of the show was featured on American Public Radio's This American Life in an episode entitled Godless America.

Sweeney's public declaration of her atheism has brought her substantial attention from secular groups around the world, as well as new fans who share similar, personal loss-of-faith stories. In 2006, Sweeney was awarded the Richard Dawkins Award and the American Humanist Association's "Humanist Pioneer" award, and joined the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. And in 2007 she introduced Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett at the Atheist Alliance awards ceremony.^[2]

An audio recording of Letting Go of God was released on CD in 2006, and it was filmed live on stage in May 2007 (release date t.b.a pending postproduction).

[edit] Other roles

Sweeney has also appeared on the big screen in Pulp Fiction, Clockstoppers, Whatever It Takes, and Stuart Little. A veteran of live television, Sweeney made her mark on primetime television as a series regular on George & Leo and Maybe It's Me and she guest starred on 3rd Rock from the Sun, Hope & Gloria, Mad About You, and According to Jim. In 2004, Sweeney co-starred in two episodes of Frasier (as Frasier's litigious unwanted houseguest, Ann) and had a guest role on Sex and the City. She served as a consultant on Sex and the City for its last three seasons. She also consulted on season two of Desperate Housewives.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Julia Sweeney at the Internet Movie Database
• Official website
• Julia Sweeney's Blog
• Julia Sweeney's Forum
• From Letting Go of God
• Julia Sweeney's 17 min Talk at TED Conference (Feb. 2006) Monterey, CA
• Julia Sweeney's foreword to The Reason Driven Life by Robert M. Price
• Saturday Night Live's Julia Sweeney interview from NPR