Alexandrea Borstein (born February 15, 1973)[1] is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She is best known for voicing Lois Griffin in the animated comedy series Family Guy (1999–present), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award. She gained further acclaim for starring as Susie Myerson in the comedy-drama series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–2023), which earned her two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Borstein was born in Highland Park, Illinois, a city north of Chicago. She was raised in Deerfield, Illinois, before her family moved to Northridge, California, a neighborhood of Los Angeles.[2] She graduated from Chatsworth High School in 1989. She has two older brothers. Her parents, Irv and Judy Borstein, are both mental health professionals.[3][4] She has stated that she is of Hungarian and Mongolian descent.[5] She is Jewish.[3][6]
In 1997, Borstein became a cast member on the third season of the sketch comedy show MADtv after being scouted by talent agents. She originally joined the cast as a featured player, but was upgraded to the repertory mid-season.
Borstein was best known on MADtv for her character Ms. Swan (owner of the Gorgeous Pretty Beauty Nail Salon); her other recurring characters included Eracist Anne, "Stick Chick" Echo, singer Jasmine Wayne-Wayne, child prodigy Karen Goddard, lounge singer Shaunda, News at Six outside-the-studio reporter Sue Napersville, and Cordo the GAP troll. When Seth Green made recurring appearances on the show as mean boss Mr. Brightling, Borstein would play his mother, Mama Brightling.
1999–2009: Further success and Family Guy
While working on MADtv, Borstein met Seth MacFarlane, who was then preparing to launch the animated sitcom Family Guy on Fox. MacFarlane was originally supposed to create animated shorts for MADtv, but declined in favor of creating an independent series. MacFarlane cast Borstein as the voice of character Lois Griffin. After the show's debut in January 1999, Family Guy was cancelled by the network twice in 2000 and 2002, but eventually returned in 2005. As well as her role as the voice performer for Lois and several other characters (including a brief appearance as Ms. Swan in a 2005 episode), she is also a producer and staff writer. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for the episode "Lois Comes Out of Her Shell" in 2013.
In 2000, Borstein was cast as Sookie St. James in the WB drama Gilmore Girls. She portrayed Sookie in the pilot but her MADtv contract prevented her from continuing in the role. Borstein made recurring appearances on Gilmore Girls throughout the show's run, first as the harpist Drella and later as the stylist Miss Celine.
Borstein was cast as a press secretary in the 2007 sitcom pilot The Thick of It, but the series was not picked up for broadcast. She was seen in the 2009 comedy For Christ's Sake, which was directed by her then husband Jackson Douglas.[citation needed]
Borstein's production company is called Crackerpants, Inc. In 2007, it released the DVD Drop Dead Gorgeous (in a Down-to-Earth Bombshell Sort of Way), a recording of a live performance at the Alex Theatre with Teddy Towne as the opening act. The title comes from one of many female character breakdowns Borstein reads from to illustrate sexism in the industry.[10]
2010–present: Getting On and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
In 2010, Borstein joined the first season staff of the Showtimecomedy-drama series Shameless, as a writer and supervising producer. In its second season, she held the position of writer and consulting producer. She also guest-starred as Lou Deckner in numerous episodes of the series, beginning in the first-season episode "But at Last Came a Knock."
She also appeared as a comedian contestant on IFC's short-lived comedy-driven game show Bunk in 2012.
Borstein starred as Dawn Forchette on the HBO comedy series Getting On, which is a remake of a UK series with the same name. The series has gained positive reviews and earned multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations. It aired from 2013 to 2015.
Borstein met actor and writer Jackson Douglas while she was studying improv at the ACME Comedy Theatre. Douglas proposed to her during the taping of a MADtvsketch and they were married in 1999. Douglas filed for divorce in October 2014 and it was finalized in 2017.[11][12]
Borstein was pregnant while she recorded the DVD commentary for the Family Guy episode "Stewie Kills Lois"; she joked about naming her baby Stewie. She and Douglas have a son and a daughter.[13][14]
According to Borstein, "We do Shabbat every Friday night. I'm not [someone] that goes to temple all the time—I'm a High Holidays temple goer, and that's about it. But there are traditions," she said in an interview. "Having a mother and a grandmother who are Holocaust survivors, I feel a large responsibility to continue that culture and those traditions—not necessarily the dogma, but what it feels like to be Jewish. I want to instill that in my kids."[17]
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