Carol Kane

Carol Kane, born Carolyn Kane on June 18, 1952, in Cleveland, Ohio, is an American actress and comedian whose career has spanned stage, film, and television for more than five decades. The daughter of Joy, a jazz singer, teacher, dancer, and pianist, and architect Michael Kane, she grew up in a Jewish family whose grandparents had emigrated from Russia, Austria, and Poland. Her father's profession required frequent relocation during her childhood, including a period in Paris at age eight, where she began learning French, and a stint in Haiti at age ten. Her parents divorced when she was twelve. Kane attended Cherry Lawn School, a boarding school in Darien, Connecticut, until 1965, and subsequently studied theater at HB Studio and the Professional Children's School in New York City. She joined both the Screen Actors Guild and the Actors' Equity Association at fourteen, making her professional theater debut that same year in a 1966 production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie starring Tammy Grimes.

Kane's screen career began while she was still a teenager, with minor appearances in Desperate Characters and Mike Nichols's Carnal Knowledge, both in 1971, the latter of which introduced her to actor Jack Nicholson. Her first leading film role came in the 1972 Canadian production Wedding in White, in which she played a teenage rape victim forced into marriage by her father. She reunited with Nicholson in Hal Ashby's 1973 film The Last Detail, appearing as a sex worker. Her most significant early film role came in 1975, when director Joan Micklin Silver cast her in Hester Street as a Russian-Jewish immigrant navigating assimilation in late nineteenth-century New York. The performance earned Kane an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress at the 48th Academy Awards and remains, by her own account, her favorite role. That same year she appeared as a bank teller in Sidney Lumet's crime drama Dog Day Afternoon, marking her first on-screen collaboration with Al Pacino, whom she had previously known through their shared theater background.

Despite the recognition generated by Hester Street, Kane has described waiting approximately a year before her next casting, attributing the delay to the typecasting that often follows awards attention. Her return came with Gene Wilder's 1977 comedy The World's Greatest Lover, which she has credited with revealing the comedic abilities that would define much of her later work. Also in 1977, she appeared in Woody Allen's Annie Hall as Allison Portchnik, the first wife of Allen's character Alvy Singer, and in Ken Russell's biographical drama Valentino. She subsequently appeared in the horror films The Mafu Cage (1978) and When a Stranger Calls (1979), though she has acknowledged a personal aversion to the horror genre and an inability to watch the latter film. A cameo in The Muppet Movie also came in 1979.

From 1980 to 1983, Kane joined the cast of the television series Taxi, portraying Simka Dahblitz-Gravas, the wife of Andy Kaufman's character Latka Gravas. She has suggested that her casting was partly connected to her work in Hester Street, where much of her dialogue was delivered in Yiddish, given that Simka speaks a fictional language with a vaguely Eastern European accent. Kane has attributed the on-screen chemistry she shared with Kaufman to the contrast between their working methods: her background in theater made her value rehearsal, while Kaufman's roots in stand-up comedy led him to resist it, a dynamic she believes strengthened their portrayal of a married couple. She has spoken warmly of Kaufman in subsequent interviews. Her work on Taxi earned her two Emmy Awards and is widely regarded as the turning point toward the comedic roles that would characterize her career going forward. She appeared in a 1984 episode of Cheers and was a regular on the 1986 series All Is Forgiven.

Kane's film work in the latter half of the 1980s included Ishtar (1987), Elaine May's box-office flop that later acquired cult status, in which she played the frustrated girlfriend of Dustin Hoffman's character. That year she also appeared in Rob Reiner's fantasy romance The Princess Bride as Valerie, the wife of Miracle Max, played by Billy Crystal. In 1988 she appeared in the Cinemax Comedy Experiment Rap Master Ronnie: A Report Card alongside Jon Cryer and the Smothers Brothers, and in the Bill Murray film Scrooged as a contemporary version of the Ghost of Christmas Present depicted as a fairy, a performance Variety described as the film's comic highlight. She played a potential love interest for Steve Martin's character in the 1990 film My Blue Heaven.

The early 1990s brought further television work, including a regular role on the NBC series American Dreamer, which ran from 1990 to 1991. In 1993, she appeared in Addams Family Values as Grandmama Addams, replacing Judith Malina in the role and reuniting with her Taxi castmate Christopher Lloyd. Guest appearances on Seinfeld in 1994 and Ellen in 1996 followed, along with a supporting role in the short-lived 1996 sitcom Pearl. Her film credits through the decade and into the early 2000s included The Pallbearer (1996), Office Killer (1997), Jawbreaker (1999), and My First Mister (2001). In 1998 she voiced Mother Duck in the American version of the animated television film The First Snow of Winter. In 1999 she made a cameo appearance as herself in the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, reprising her Taxi character within the film.

Kane's Broadway career spans 1972 to 2012 and includes productions such as The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Ring Round the Bathtub, Harvey, and The Exonerated. Her work in the 1978 season brought a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play. She is also closely associated with the role of the villainous headmistress Madame Morrible in the musical Wicked, which she played across multiple productions between 2005 and 2014. Kane made her Wicked debut on the First National Tour, performing the role from March 9 through December 19, 2005. She then brought the character to Broadway, appearing in the production from January 10 through November 12, 2006. She subsequently played the role in the Los Angeles production beginning February 7, 2007, departing December 30, 2007, before returning to the production at a later date. Her Broadway appearance in Wicked is listed among her verified stage credits through 2012.

From 2015 to 2020, Kane was a main cast member on the Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, playing the recurring character Lillian Kaushtupper. She has more recently taken on the recurring role of Pelia in the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, a part she has held since 2023.