Lauren Graham

Lauren Graham is an American actress and author born on March 16, 1967, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her father, Lawrence Graham, worked as a candy industry lobbyist and served as president of the National Confectioners Association; her mother, Donna Grant, was a fashion buyer. Graham was raised in the Catholic faith of her father, whose Irish heritage she shares, while her maternal grandfather was a Baptist minister. Her mother grew up in Japan as the daughter of a missionary, and Graham herself lived in Japan for several years while her father worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Vietnam. Her parents divorced when she was five, after which she relocated with her father to the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where he became a congressional staffer. She also spent portions of her childhood in Southampton, New York. Her mother later moved to London, where she pursued a music career until her death in 2005 at age 61. Graham has a half-sister and a half-brother from her father's second marriage, as well as a British half-sister, Shade Grant, from her mother's second marriage, who works at a talent agency.

As a child, Graham competed in horseback riding before turning her focus to acting. She attended Langley High School, where she participated in the drill team and graduated in 1984. She spent two years in summer stock at the Barn Theatre in Augusta, Michigan, earning her Actors' Equity Card in 1988. Graham attended New York University before transferring to Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts in English literature. After relocating to Texas in 1992, she earned a Master of Fine Arts in Acting Performance from Southern Methodist University.

Following the completion of her graduate studies, Graham returned to New York City, where she worked as a waitress and as an SAT test prep tutor for The Princeton Review. She made publicity appearances in the costume of Striker, the dog mascot of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, and later moved to Hollywood in 1995. She appeared in commercials for Cascade, Dimetapp, AT&T, and Lean Cuisine, and hosted free preview weekends on The Movie Channel. Between 1996 and 1997, she accumulated guest roles on multiple NBC series, including 3rd Rock from the Sun, Caroline in the City, Seinfeld, Law and Order, and NewsRadio. She also starred in four television pilots that were not picked up for full series runs: Townies, Good Company, Conrad Bloom, and M.Y.O.B.

Graham's career shifted significantly in 2000 when she was cast as Lorelai Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, a role for which she received a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama at the 2002 Golden Globe Awards, as well as nominations at the 2001 and 2002 SAG Awards. Beginning with the Season 7 episode "To Whom It May Concern," she also served as a producer on the series. Following the conclusion of Gilmore Girls, she appeared as herself in two episodes of NBC's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and competed in the second season of Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown, finishing second to Maura Tierney in the championship game. Her film work during this period included Sweet November (2001), Bad Santa (2003), The Pacifier (2005), Because I Said So (2007), and Evan Almighty (2007). In 2007, she signed a seven-figure development deal with NBC and provided voice-over work in national advertising for Kellogg's Special K products; in 2008, she voiced American Express ads for the Plum Card.

Graham made her Broadway debut in 2009, playing Miss Adelaide in the revival of Guys and Dolls at the Nederlander Theatre. The production began preview performances on February 5, 2009, opened officially on March 1, 2009, and closed on June 14, 2009, after 121 performances and 28 previews. That same year, she voiced the character Fran Lockwood in the Sony Pictures Animation film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. In October 2009, it was announced that Graham would replace Maura Tierney, who had left to seek treatment for cancer, in the NBC series Parenthood, playing single mother Sarah Braverman. The series debuted in 2010 and ran for six seasons through 2015.

In 2015, Graham appeared in the adventure drama film Max, playing the mother of an American Marine killed in Afghanistan whose family adopts his Malinois dog. She stated that she based her character on her grandparents and felt a personal connection to the film because many members of its choir came from a church her grandfather had attended. In 2013, Graham published her debut novel, Someday, Someday, Maybe, with Ballantine Books. In 2016, she reprised the role of Lorelai Gilmore in the Netflix revival miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life and published a memoir titled Talking as Fast as I Can.