Laraine Newman

Laraine Newman was born on March 2, 1952, in Los Angeles, California, the youngest of four children and the granddaughter of a cattle rancher from Arizona. Her family is Jewish, and she has a twin brother named Paul as well as a sister, Tracy Newman, an Emmy Award–winning television writer. Newman is the mother of actress and comedian Hannah Einbinder and actor Spike Einbinder.

Newman's interest in performance began early. She took her first improvisational theatre classes at age fifteen while attending Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California, graduating in 1970. After high school, she auditioned for four acting schools in England, among them the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and Bristol Old Vic, but was not accepted to any of them. She instead traveled to Paris, where she spent a year studying mime under Marcel Marceau. Returning to the United States at nineteen, Newman settled back in Los Angeles and became a founding member of the comedy improvisational group The Groundlings. During this period she also worked for a booking agent who represented rock bands, typing up contracts. She cites Eve Arden, Madeline Kahn, and Richard Pryor as her primary early influences.

In 1974, Lorne Michaels hired Newman, then twenty-two, for a Lily Tomlin television special, having been impressed by her work as a founding member of The Groundlings. The following year, Newman became one of the original cast members of NBC's Saturday Night Live, appearing on the program from its premiere in 1975 through 1980. Among the recurring characters she created on the show were Connie Conehead, proto-Valley girl Sherry, and Christie Christina, the ditzy co-host of E. Buzz Miller's public-access cable television show alongside Dan Aykroyd. Using her own name, she also portrayed a television news reporter for the Weekend Update segment during the tenures of both Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin. Newman generally chose not to repeat her characters, resulting in fewer signature roles than some of her castmates. She has identified her portrayal of filmmaker Lina Wertmüller as her personal favorite character from the series. During her years on SNL, Newman developed close friendships with fellow cast members, including Gilda Radner, and by her own account also struggled with eating disorders and a heroin addiction. She became sober in 1987. In 2017, Newman and the rest of the original SNL cast were inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

In 1980, the same year she departed Saturday Night Live, Newman made her Broadway debut in Fifth of July. That year she also appeared in Woody Allen's film Stardust Memories in a small role. Her 1980s film and television work included Wholly Moses, Perfect, Invaders from Mars, and the syndicated comedy series The Canned Film Festival, in which she starred as a character named Laraine the usherette. She also made guest appearances on Laverne and Shirley, St. Elsewhere, and Amazing Stories, and reprised her role as Connie Conehead in the 1983 television special E.T. and Friends.

Newman's career continued across film and television in the following decades. She played the antagonist in Problem Child 2 in 1991 and appeared in the 1993 film Coneheads, this time in a supporting role as Connie's aunt Laarta. She appeared in the 1994 film The Flintstones and in episodes of Friends, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and 7th Heaven. Newman also developed a substantial voice acting career, contributing to animated series including The Tick, CatDog, Rugrats, and its spinoff All Grown Up. Her voice work extended to several Pixar feature films, among them Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Up, and Inside Out. In 2021, her memoir May You Live in Interesting Times was released on Audible.