Jane Leeves - Career

Career

She was a regular on The Benny Hill Show (as one of "Hill's Angels"), putting her experience as a dancer in the famous "Christmas in Heaven" scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and appeared as a tourist with a baby in the David Lee Roth music video for the song "California Girls," but struggled for several years to establish herself. She became somewhat visible as the flighty record company employee, Blue (née Prudence Anne Bartlett), on the syndicated sitcom Throb!.

She had a recurring role in the television series Murphy Brown which provided her first period of success, playing Audrey, the loud and awkward girlfriend of producer Miles Silverberg (played by Grant Shaud). Leeves also appeared as the troublesome Marla the Virgin in four risqué episodes of Seinfeld: "The Virgin", "The Contest", "The Pilot" and "The Finale - Part 2". During this period Leeves was cast as Holly for the pilot of the U.S. version of the science-fiction comedy Red Dwarf. She also had a role as a lesbian in the 1985 film To Live and Die in L.A.

In 1993, she joined the cast of the television series Frasier. Leeves played the eccentric, forthright and allegedly psychic Mancunian Daphne Moon. By the start of 2000-01 season, Leeves was pregnant, and the writers incorporated her pregnancy into shows as weight gain due to her character's stress from her relationship with Niles (portrayed by David Hyde Pierce). By the conclusion of Frasier, Leeves had received an Emmy Award nomination for her role and had become the highest-paid British actress in Hollywood.

Appearing less frequently in cinema, Leeves lent her regular voice and her singing voice to the animated film James and the Giant Peach (1996) and acted in the film Music of the Heart (1999).

In 2002, she appeared in the Broadway musical Cabaret.

In 2004, she hosted an episode of the British television comedy quiz show Have I Got News for You.

Her 2006 show, The WB's sitcom Misconceptions, went unaired.

Leeves provides guest vocals in The Penguins of Madagascar as Lulu, a female chimp, with whom Phil falls in love.

With Peri Gilpin, Leeves also set up the production company "Bristol Cities" (cockney rhyming slang for 'titties'). Their latest project was in 2007 a pilot for a US remake of the British sitcom The Vicar of Dibley, with Kirstie Alley in the title role.

In 2010 she was a guest star in two episodes in ABC's Desperate Housewives as Lynette and Tom's therapist, Dr. Graham.

Since 2010 she has been playing a fortysomething in the new TV Land comedy, Hot in Cleveland, with Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Malick (also her co-star in the final season of Frasier), and TV and film legend Betty White. In 2011 she was nominated Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, with cast.