Rhea Perlman

Rhea Jo Perlman is an American actress and author born on March 31, 1948, in Coney Island, Brooklyn. She was raised in the nearby Bensonhurst neighborhood in a Jewish family with roots in Poland and Russia. Her father, Philip Perlman, was a Polish Jewish immigrant who managed a doll parts factory, and her mother, Adele, worked as a bookkeeper. Perlman has a younger sister, Heide, who became a television writer, story editor, and producer with credits on Cheers, Frasier, and The Tracey Ullman Show. Film director Randall Miller is Perlman's cousin. Perlman studied drama at Hunter College in New York, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1968.

Perlman launched her acting career with a small attendant role in the off-off-Broadway production Dracula Sabbat, which ran from September 1970 through June 1971. In 1972, she appeared in the film Hot Dogs for Gauguin and took part in Westbeth Playwrights Feminist Collective's production of Up – An Uppity Revue, a production that also featured Danny DeVito, whom she would later marry. A recurring role as Zena, the girlfriend of Louie De Palma, on the television series Taxi gave Perlman one of her first notable screen credits. Producers Glen and Les Charles subsequently saw her in a stage role and cast her as barmaid Carla Tortelli on their sitcom Cheers, which premiered in 1982.

Cheers ran for eleven seasons, ending in 1993, and became one of the most decorated sitcoms in television history, accumulating 20 Emmy wins from 95 nominations. Perlman received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy every season except 1992, winning the award four times: in 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1989. She also received six Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Series, more nominations in that category than any other performer. In 2011, NBC recognized Carla Tortelli as one of the greatest television characters of all time. In 1986, Perlman appeared in the Steven Spielberg anthology series Amazing Stories in an episode titled "The Wedding Ring," alongside DeVito.

Perlman's film work spans several decades. Her motion picture credits include There Goes the Neighborhood (1992), Canadian Bacon (1995), Carpool (1996), Sunset Park (1996), and Matilda (1996), the last of which she made alongside DeVito. She had a cameo in 10 Items or Less (2006) and starred in the independent film Love Comes Lately (2007). In 2012, she appeared in The Sessions, and in 2019 she appeared in Poms. In 2023, Perlman played Barbie creator Ruth Handler in Greta Gerwig's film Barbie. She also appeared in the second season of the crime mystery series Poker Face in 2025.

Among her television film credits, Perlman starred opposite Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen in the 1992 made-for-television movie To Grandmother's House We Go, playing the wife of Jerry Van Dyke's character. In 2000, she appeared in How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale, in which she portrayed a character modeled on Jackie Kennedy, and played a therapist in Secret Cutting. She starred as the title character in the 1996 sitcom Pearl and appeared in the 2001 drama Kate Brasher. From 2014 to 2017, she held a recurring role on The Mindy Project as Annette Castellano, Danny's mother. In 2009, she appeared in the HBO series Hung, and in 2007 she performed as Bertha in the West End production of the comedy Boeing Boeing in London.

Perlman's stage work includes her 2000 Broadway appearance in The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. In 2009, she and her daughter Lucy DeVito appeared together in the off-Broadway production of Love, Loss, and What I Wore, adapted by Nora and Delia Ephron, at the Westside Theatre.

Beyond acting, Perlman is the author of the illustrated children's book series Otto Undercover, which as of mid-2012 comprised six titles: Born to Drive, Canyon Catastrophe, Water Balloon Doom, Toxic Taffy Takeover, The Brink of Ex-stink-tion, and Brain Freeze.

Perlman first encountered DeVito on January 17, 1971, when she attended a single performance of the play The Shrinking Bride in which he appeared. They moved in together two weeks later and married on January 28, 1982. The couple have three children: Lucy Chet DeVito, Grace Fan DeVito, and Jacob Daniel DeVito, and two grandchildren. The family lived in Beverly Hills, California, and maintained a vacation home in Interlaken, New Jersey. Perlman and DeVito separated in October 2012, reconciled in early 2013, and separated again in March 2017. Perlman has stated she has no intention of divorcing DeVito, and in 2019 she noted that the two had grown closer as friends following their separation. Perlman's father, Philip, relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s and went on to appear in more than 30 episodes of Cheers under his own name, Phil, eventually building a secondary career as a character actor with credits including Throw Momma from the Train, Hoffa, and Frasier.