JANE T. CURTIN, THE AMERICAN 'QUEEN OF DEADPAN'

Today, The Grandma has been watching some TV Series. She has chosen The Librarians and Unforgettable, two interesting works that have in common the same actress, the American Jane Curtin, well-known as the Queen of Deadpan, who was born on a day like today in 1947.

Jane Therese Curtin (born September 6, 1947) is an American actress and comedian.

First coming to prominence as an original cast member on the hit TV comedy series Saturday Night Live in 1975, she went on to win back-to-back Emmy Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on the 1980s sitcom Kate & Allie portraying the role of Allison "Allie" Lowell. Curtin later starred in the hit series 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001), playing the role of Dr. Mary Albright.

Curtin has also appeared in many film roles, including Charlene in The Librarian series of movies (2004–2008). She reprised one of her Saturday Night Live characters, Prymaat (Clorhone) Conehead, in the 1993 film Coneheads.

She is sometimes referred to as the Queen of Deadpan. The Philadelphia Inquirer once called her a refreshing drop of acid. She was included on a 1986 list of the Top Prime Time Actors and Actresses of All Time.

More information: Television Academy

Curtin was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the daughter of Mary Constance and John Joseph Curtin, who owned an insurance agency.

She grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and graduated from Newton Country Day School of the Sacred Heart in Newton in 1965.

Curtin holds an associate degree from Elizabeth Seton Junior College in New York City, class of 1967. She then attended Northeastern University from 1967 to 1968.

She has served as a U.S. Committee National Ambassador for UNICEF.

In 1968, Curtin decided to pursue comedy as a career and dropped out of college. She joined a comedy group, The Proposition, and performed with them until 1972. She starred in Pretzels, an off-Broadway play written by Curtin, John Forster, Judith Kahan, and Fred Grandy, in 1974.

One of the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players of NBC's Saturday Night Live (1975), Curtin remained on the show through the 1979–1980 season.

Unlike many of her fellow SNL cast members who ventured successfully into film, Curtin chose to stay mainly in television, with a few sporadic film appearances. To date, she has starred in two long-running television sitcoms. First, in Kate & Allie (1984–89), with Susan Saint James, she played a single mother named Allie Lowell and twice won the Emmy Award for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

She later joined the cast of 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001) playing a human, Dr. Mary Albright, opposite the alien family, composed of John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, French Stewart, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. As with SNL, her mostly strait-laced character was often confounded by the zany and whimsical antics of the Solomon family.

In 1980, Curtin starred with Susan Saint James and Jessica Lange in the moderate hit How to Beat the High Cost of Living.

In 1993, Curtin and Dan Aykroyd were reunited in Coneheads, a full-length motion picture based on their popular SNL characters. They also appeared together as the voices of a pair of wasps in the film Antz.

In 1997, Curtin narrated two episodes of the documentary television series Understanding, and she has done voice work for Recess and Cyberchase. She guest starred on Sesame Street in 1985.

More information: The New Yorker

Curtin also starred with Fred Savage in the ABC sitcom Crumbs, which debuted in January 2006 and was cancelled in May of that year. She also guest-starred on Gary Unmarried as Connie, Allison's mother.

In 2009, she played Paul Rudd and Andy Samberg's mother in I Love You, Man.

In 2012, she joined Unforgettable as Dr. Joanne Webster, a gifted but crusty medical examiner; in 2014, she occasionally reprised her role as the first Guardian on The Librarians.

In 2013, she took a small role in The Heat as Mrs. Mullins, the mother of Detective Mullins. Curtin played Moira, the Headmistress of the Motherland, in Disney's Godmothered.

In 2020, she had a co-starring role as a quirky mother-in-law on the ABC sitcom United We Fall.

Curtin has also performed on Broadway on occasion. She first appeared on the Great White Way as Miss Proserpine Garnett in the play Candida in 1981. She later went on to be a replacement actress in two other plays, Love Letters and Noises Off, and was in the 2002 revival of Our Town, which received huge press attention as Paul Newman returned to the Broadway stage after several decades away.

She also has narrated several audiobooks, including Carl Hiaasen's novel Nature Girl.

On May 7, 2010, Curtin placed second in the Jeopardy! Million Dollar Celebrity Invitational, winning $250,000 for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Michael McKean won the tournament, while Cheech Marin came in third.

She presented Emmy Awards in 1984, 1987, and 1998; the 11th Annual American Comedy Awards in 1997; and the 54th Annual Golden Globe Awards in 1997.

Curtin has guest hosted several episodes of Selected Shorts produced by Symphony Space and distributed by Public Radio International.

More information: Parade

 I never really marketed myself,
so each job I was given was a new marketing tool,
and that would be the way I marketed myself.

Jane Curtin