Arab Americans

Teri Hatcher

Teri Lynn Hatcher (born December 8, 1964) is an American actress, writer, presenter, and former NFL cheerleader. She is known for her television roles, portraying Lois Lane on the ABC series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and as Susan Mayer on the television series Desperate Housewives, for which Hatcher won the Golden Globe Award for best actress, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Primetime Emmy nomination.

Early life

Hatcher was born in Palo Alto, California, the daughter of Esther (née Beshur), a computer programmer who worked for Lockheed Martin, and Owen Walker Hatcher, Jr., a nuclear physicist and electrical engineer.^[1] Her father is of English, Irish, and Welsh descent (Hatcher has said that he also has Choctaw ancestry) and her mother is of half Syrian and also Czech and Irish ancestry.^[1][2][3] Hatcher took ballet lessons at the San Juan School of Dance in Los Altos. She grew up in Sunnyvale, California.^[1] and attended Mango Junior High (now Sunnyvale Middle School), Fremont High School in Sunnyvale and De Anza College in Cupertino.

In March 2006, Hatcher revealed to Vanity Fair that she was sexually abused from the age of five by Richard Hayes Stone, an uncle by marriage who was later divorced by Hatcher’s aunt. She said her parents were unaware of the abuse at the time.^[4] In 2002, she assisted Santa Clara County prosecutors with their indictment of Stone for a more recent molestation that led his female victim to commit suicide at the age of 14.^[1][4] Stone pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.^[5] In the Vanity Fair interview, Hatcher said she told the prosecutors about her own abuse because she was haunted by thoughts of the 14-year-old girl who shot herself, and feared Stone might escape conviction. Stone died of colon cancer on August 19, 2008, having served six years of his sentence.^[6]

Career

1984–1992: Early work

Hatcher studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater.^[7] One of her early jobs (in 1984) was as an NFL cheerleader with the San Francisco 49ers.^[1] From September 1985 to May 1986 she joined the cast of the TV series The Love Boat, playing the role of “Amy”, one of the “Mermaid” showgirls.^[8] From 1986 to 1989, she appeared in the recurring role of “Penny Parker” opposite Richard Dean Anderson’s eponymous hero on the TV series MacGyver.^[7] In 1987, she played the daughter of Patty Duke’s lead character in the short-lived Fox comedy Karen’s Song. In 1988, she made a guest appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Lt. Robinson. In 1989, she guest-starred in an episode of Quantum Leap titled “Star Crossed”.

Hatcher’s next TV series role, in 1991, was in the Norman Lear creation Sunday Dinner. She portrayed a 26-year-old lawyer in an affair with a widowed businessman twice her age, played by Robert Loggia. The series had a brief run on CBS that summer, but was not renewed. In 1992, Hatcher tried out for the role of Jamie Buchman on Mad About You and made it to the final two choices, but lost the part to Helen Hunt.^[9]

1993–1997: Breakthrough

Hatcher landed a starring role of Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (opposite Dean Cain) in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman from 1993 to 1997.^[1] At the height of the show’s popularity in 1995, a picture of Hatcher wrapped in a Superman cape was reportedly the most downloaded image on the Internet averaging 20,000 downloads each month for a six-month period.^[10] “It’s a great shot,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “Not so much because it’s me. It’s just cool looking.”^[11]

In “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” the cast was worried that she would be taller than Superman in heels as she was 5’8¹⁄₂” and Dean Cain was 6′. ABC cancelled Lois & Clark in 1997. Hatcher won the role of Paris Carver (beating out Monica Bellucci) in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.^[12] Hatcher was three months pregnant at the filming’s start, by her then husband, Jon Tenney. A publicist said the pregnancy did not affect the production schedule.^[13] Hatcher later regretted playing Paris Carver, saying, “It’s such an artificial kind of character to be playing that you don’t get any special satisfaction from it.”^[14] She was voted the world’s sexiest woman by readers of popular men’s magazine FHM in the same year.^[15] Hatcher also appeared in films such as Spy Kids (2001), Dead in the Water (1991), 2 Days in the Valley (1996) and The Cool Surface (1994). She co-starred with Alec Baldwin in Heaven’s Prisoners (1996), which failed at the box office.

Hatcher made a much-discussed guest appearance on a 1993 episode of Seinfeld, in which her character, Sidra, breaks up with Jerry because she believes that Jerry was trying to have Elaine surreptitiously determine whether Sidra had breast implants. (“They’re real… and they’re spectacular.”) She returned to play Sidra in two subsequent episodes, The Pilot, and The Finale (Part 2).^[8] Hatcher appeared in a series of Radio Shack television commercials alongside NFL player Howie Long. They remain close friends and together have bought farm land on the outskirts of Los Angeles, with the intent of eventually raising endangered species.

2004–present

Hatcher hosted NBC’s Saturday Night Live in 1996. She beat out four other actresses for one of the lead roles on ABC’s Desperate Housewives,^[7] on which she starred as Susan Mayer, a role for which she won the Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Golden Globe Award in January 2005.^[1] In 2005, Hatcher won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award in the same category. In July 2005, she was nominated for an Emmy award as Best Actress in a Comedy Series for the role, along with costars Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman.^[16]

As of April 2006, Hatcher was one of the highest paid television actresses in the United States. She reportedly earned $285,000 per episode of Desperate Housewives. In May 2006, she released her first book, Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life.^[1] Hatcher performed The Beatles song “Good Night” on the 2006 charity album Unexpected Dreams – Songs From the Stars. On April 9, 2008, Hatcher appeared on Idol Gives Back, singing Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats”. She also appeared in the 2009 hit film Coraline. She voiced the Other Mother, a mysterious, button-eyed figure, and as Coraline’s mother Mel Jones, who constantly shows Coraline “tough love”. The film received critical acclaim.

In 2010, Hatcher made a return to the Superman franchise, with a special guest role in the final season of Smallville as Ella Lane, the mother of Erica Durance’s Lois Lane.^[17][18] The episode continued a tradition of former Lois Lane actresses portraying the character’s mother many years later. Noel Neill appeared as Lois’ mother in the 1978 film Superman: The Movie, and Phyllis Coates made a similar appearance on Lois & Clark.^[19]

A report in November 2010 suggested that Hatcher, along with co-star Felicity Huffman, would be quitting Desperate Housewives,^[20] but ABC denied the claim.^[21] Hatcher later addressed the rumors of her departure from Desperate Housewives saying, “There are not enough adjectives to describe how stupid, off base, and ridiculously untrue this is.”^[22]However, after the show concluded in 2012, media sources revealed an apparent rift with her co-stars. It has been widely speculated that the cast did not get along well with Hatcher.^{[23][24][25][26]} Eva Longoria, Felicity Huffman, Marcia Cross, and Vanessa Williams gave thank-you gifts to the crew from the show which included a message with their names subscribed at the end, and Hatcher’s name was distinctly absent.^[26] TV Guide source, William Keck, revealed that “something went down” between Hatcher and the cast that caused a split and also observed how Hatcher would physically distance herself from the others during breaks in filming.^[26] On her end, Hatcher said to TV Guide, ” I will never disclose the true and complicated journey of us all, but I wish everyone on the show well.”^[23] Longoria denied any animosity saying to David Letterman, “we all get along.”^[24] Remarkably, a friend of Longoria’s revealed, to another media source, that Hatcher “excluded herself from the rest of the cast from day one,” and that she chose to end it all on a sad note, saying, “doing the last press they will ever do for the show, the ladies stood united and were shocked when Teri simply didn’t show up.”^[25]

On December 10, 2011, Men’s Health listed Hatcher as number 38 in their “Hottest Women of All Time” list.^[27]

Personal life

Hatcher married Marcus Leithold on June 4, 1988; they divorced the following year.^[7] On May 27, 1994, she married actor Jon Tenney; they had a daughter, Emerson Rose, on November 10, 1997, and divorced in March 2003.^[7]

In June 2007, Hatcher appeared on UK chat show The Paul O’Grady Show, where she revealed she writes a column in Glamour.^[28]

In February 2008, Hydroderm sued Hatcher for breach of contract, claiming she had promoted the beauty products of other companies. She insisted her promotion of CityLips’ lip plumper did not affect the Hydroderm deal. Her attorney Alan Wertheimer called the lawsuit an “unjustified and public assault” on her “good name, reputation and celebrity.”^[29] Her lawyer persuaded a judge in Los Angeles to move the case to arbitration.^[30]

On September 13, 2009, she finished the Malibu Triathlon (0.5 mi or 0.80 km ocean swim, 18 mi or 29 km out-and-back bike course, and 4 mi or 6.4 km out-and-back run course) in 2 h 6 min 50.7 s.^[31] She returned to the event in 2010 to complete only the swim portion as a fundraiser.^[32]

Filmography

Television

Film

Awards and nominations

References