Lynne Lipton

Lynne Lipton is an American actress whose work spans stage, film, television, and voice performance. She began her career in improvisational theater, spending 1969 to 1970 with the Second City company in Chicago before performing with The Committee in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Lipton's Broadway career ran from 1969 to 1974. She made her Broadway debut as a standby for Bernadette Peters in La Strada, a musical adaptation choreographed by Alvin Ailey and directed by Alan Schneider that closed after a single performance. She subsequently appeared in the original production of David Rabe's Boom Boom Room at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre, where she performed matinees in place of Madeline Kahn. Her additional Broadway credits include Sherlock Holmes, which was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as Tom Stoppard's Travesties, also staged by the RSC.

In the early 1970s, Lipton appeared for two seasons on the David Frost Review alongside Cleavon Little, Marcia Rodd, and Jack Gilford. She had originally been cast as Mrs. Houseman in the film Dirty Dancing but became ill and had to withdraw from the production; the role was ultimately filled by Kelly Bishop.

Lipton became widely recognized for her voice work, most notably on the 1980s animated series ThunderCats, for which she voiced all female characters through the first season. Her roles on the series included Cheetara, Wilykit, Mandora, Willa the Queen of the Warrior Maidens, the Female Unicorn Guardian, and Luna of the Lunatacs. When the second season began, Gerrianne Raphael joined the cast to voice Pumyra. Lipton later reprised the role of Cheetara for an episode of Family Guy. She also provided the voice of Gethsemanee in the 2002 video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Her voiceover and animation work earned her several Clio Awards, and in the mid-1980s Ad Age referred to her as the Meryl Streep of the microphone.