Early life and education

Baranski was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Virginia (née Mazurowski) and Lucien Baranski, who edited a Polish-language newspaper. She is of Polish descent and her grandparents were actors in the Polish theater. Baranski attended high school at the Villa Maria Academy in Cheektowaga, a suburb of Buffalo. She then studied at New York City's Juilliard School (Drama Division Group 3: 1970-1974) where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1974.

Career

Stage

Baranski made her Off-Broadway debut in Coming Attractions at Playwrights Horizons in 1980, and has appeared in several Off Broadway productions at the Manhattan Theatre Club, starting with Sally and Marsha in 1982.

Baranski made her Broadway debut in Hide & Seek in 1980. For her next Broadway performance, in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, she won the 1984 Tony Award Best Featured Actress in a Play. Other Broadway credits include: Hurlyburly, The House of Blue Leaves, Rumors (for which she won her second Tony), Regrets Only, Nick & Nora, and the Encores! concert staging of Follies.

At the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Baranski starred as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd in 2002 (for which she won the 2003 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical) and as the title character in Mame in 2006.

In her first Broadway production since 1991, she was featured as the maid Berthe in the 2008 revival of Boeing Boeing. The show garnered two Tony Awards, one for Best Revival of a Play and the other for Best Actor (Mark Rylance). The original cast was Bradley Whitford (Bernard), Kathryn Hahn (Gloria), Christine Baranski (Berthe), Gina Gershon (Gabriella), and Mary McCormack (Gretchen). The show closed on January 4, 2009.

She also appeared in a one night only concert benefit performance of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music for Roundabout Theatre Company as Countess Charlotte Malcolm on January 12, 2009. The cast included Vanessa Redgrave, Natasha Richardson, Victor Garber, and Marc Kudisch, among others.

She has won both the Tony and Drama Desk Awards twice.

Film

Baranski has also starred in various roles in films and television. In film, some of her better known roles are as Katherine Archer in The Birdcage, Mary Sunshine in the musical Chicago, Martha May Whovier in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Connie Chasseur in The Ref and as Tanya Chisham-Leigh in the hit musical Mamma Mia! She also played Cinderella's stepmother in the film adaptation of the musical, Into the Woods.

Television work

Though widely reported to have worked as a child actress under the name "Chris Charney," Baranski denies ever having appeared on The Brady Bunch, adamant that "the first real TV show" that she worked on was Cybill. Earlier, she had appeared in short-term roles on various daytime soap operas, including All My Children and Another World.

Baranski was featured as Cybill Shepherd's sarcastic, hard-drinking friend Maryanne Thorpe in the CBS sitcom Cybill, which ran from 1995 until 1998, during which time she hosted Saturday Night Live and won an Emmy Award as Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series along with three other nominations. The next year, Baranski received an Emmy nomination for a guest starring role as an intimidating radio psychiatrist on an episode of the NBC series Frasier. She had an uncredited role in the series Now and Again as the voice of Roger's overbearing wife Ruth, who was never seen by viewers.

Baranski later appeared in the 2000-2001 sitcom Welcome to New York and, with John Laroquette, in the 2003-2004 NBC sitcom Happy Family. She co-starred with Bernadette Peters in a pilot for an ABC sitcom, Adopted, in 2005, which was not picked up. She also played Faith Clancy, the mother of Jim Clancy in Ghost Whisperer. Around the same time, Baranski portrayed a librarian named Sonja Umdahl in the "Dick and the Single Girl" episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, while also guest starring in The Big Bang Theory as Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, an unemotional expert in psychiatry and neuroscience, and mother of one of the protagonists, Leonard Hofstadter. She first appeared in the second season episode "The Maternal Capacitance", for which she received an Emmy nomination. Due to the popularity of her first appearance, Baranski returned in the third season for the Christmas episode "The Maternal Congruence", receiving another Emmy nomination. As of May 2016, she has appeared in seven more episodes.

From 2009 to 2016, she played the role of Diane Lockhart, a top litigator and senior partner of a Chicago law firm on The Good Wife. She has been nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for each season of the series, in the years 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Besides her work on The Good Wife and the aforementioned guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory, other recent appearances include Ugly Betty in 2009 as Victoria Hartley, the haughty mother of Betty's new boyfriend.

Personal life

Baranski married actor Matthew Cowles in October 1983. They were married until his death on May 22, 2014. They have two daughters, Isabel (born 1984) and Lily (born 1987). One of her daughters is a practicing attorney, attending law school, passing the New York bar exam, and working for the Brooklyn district attorney during the run of The Good Wife.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role
1982	Soup for One	Blonde in Bar
1983	Lovesick	Nymphomaniac
1984	Crackers	Maxine
1986	9½ Weeks	Thea
1986	Legal Eagles	Carol Freeman
1987	Pick-up Artist, TheThe Pick-up Artist	Harriet
1990	Reversal of Fortune	Andrea Reynolds, Claus' Girlfriend
1993	Night We Never Met, TheThe Night We Never Met	Lucy
1993	Life with Mikey	Carol
1993	Addams Family Values	Becky Martin-Granger
1994	Ref, TheThe Ref	Connie Chasseur
1994	Getting In	Mrs. Margaret "Maggie" Higgs
1994	War, TheThe War	Miss Strapford
1995	New Jersey Drive	Prosecutor
1995	Jeffrey	Ann Marwood Bartle
1996	Birdcage, TheThe Birdcage	Katherine Archer
1998	Odd Couple II, TheThe Odd Couple II	Thelma
1998	Bulworth	Constance Bulworth
1999	Cruel Intentions	Bunny Caldwell
1999	Bowfinger	Carol
2000	Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas	Martha May Whovier
2002	The Guru	Shantal
2002	Chicago	Mary Sunshine
2003	Marci X	Mary Ellen Spinkle
2004	Welcome to Mooseport	Charlotte Cole
2005	Scooby Doo! in Where's My Mummy?	Amelia Von Butch (voice)
2006	Falling for Grace	Bree
2006	Relative Strangers	Arleen Clayton
2006	Bonneville	Francine
2008	Mamma Mia!	Tanya Chisham-Leigh
2010	Bounty Hunter, TheThe Bounty Hunter	Kitty Hurley
2012	Foodfight!	Hedda Shopper (voice)
2014	Into The Woods	Cinderella's Stepmother

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1977	Busting Loose	Debbie	TV series: Episode "The Decision: Part 1"
1980	Playing for Time	Olga	TV movie
1982	Midsummer Night's Dream, AA Midsummer Night's Dream	Helena	TV movie
1982	Another World	Beverly Tucker	TV series, unknown episodes
1984	All My Children	Jewel Maniscalo	TV series, unknown episodes
1985	Big Shots in America		TV movie
1985	Equalizer, TheThe Equalizer	Victoria Baines	TV series, episode: "Mama's Boy"
1987	House of Blue Leaves, TheThe House of Blue Leaves	Bunny Flingus	TV movie
1988	The Thorns	Polly	TV series, episode: "The Maid"
1991	Law & Order	Katherine Masucci Beigel	TV series, episodes: "The Torrents of Greed Parts 1 & 2"
1992	Screenplay	Blair Bennett	TV series, episode: "Buying a Landslide"
1993	To Dance with the White Dog	Kate	TV movie
1994	Law & Order	Rose Siegal	TV series, episode: "Nurture"
1995-1998	Cybill	Maryanne Thorpe	TV series, 87 episodes
1996	Saturday Night Live	Host	TV series, episode: "Christine Baranski/The Cure"
1997	3rd Rock from the Sun	Sonja Umdahl	TV series, episode: "Dick and the Single Girl"
1999	Now and Again	Ruth Bender	Episode: "Origins" (voice, uncredited)
1999	Frasier	Dr. Nora Fairchild	TV series, series 6 episode 20: "Dr. Nora"
2000-2001	Welcome to New York	Marsha Bickner	TV series, 13 episodes
2001	Citizen Baines	Glenn Ferguson Baines Welch	TV series, episode: "Three Days in November"
2002	Speed Racer X	Trixie Fontaine	TV series, voice
2002	Presidio Med	Dr. Terry Howland	TV series, episodes: "Pick Your Battles", "Best of Enemies"
2003	Eloise at the Plaza	Prunella Stickler	TV movie
2003	Eloise at Christmastime	Prunella Stickler	TV movie
2003-2004	Happy Family	Annie Brennan	TV series, 22 episodes
2004	Spellbound		TV
2005	Recipe for a Perfect Christmas	Lee Bellmont	TV movie
2005	Adopted	Judy Rabinowitz	TV movie
2005	In the Game		TV pilot
2005	Ghost Whisperer	Faith Clancy	TV series, episodes: "Voices", "The Crossing"
2006	Inseparable	Barbara	TV movie
2006	American Dad!	Homeless Woman	TV series, episode: "Failure Is Not a Factory-installed Option" (voice)
2009	Ugly Betty	Victoria Hartley	TV series, 4 episodes
2009	Psych	Alice Clayton	TV series, episode: "He Dead"
2009-present	Big Bang Theory, TheThe Big Bang Theory	Dr. Beverly Hofstadter	TV series, 9 episodes: "The Maternal Capacitance", "The Maternal Congruence", "The Skank Reflex Analysis", "The Raiders Minimization", "The Status Quo Combustion", "The Maternal Combustion", "The Celebration Experimentation", "The Line Substitution Solution", "The Convergence Convergence"
2009-2016	Good Wife, TheThe Good Wife	Diane Lockhart	TV series, 156 episodes
2011	Who Is Simon Miller?	Amanda	TV movie
2011	Ugly Americans	Grimes' mummy	TV series, Season 2, episode 10: "Mummy Dearest" (voice)
2015	BoJack Horseman	Amanda Hannity	TV series, Season 2, episode 7: "Hank After Dark" (voice)

Video games

Year	Project	Role	Notes
2013	Skylanders: Swap Force	Kaos' Mother

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Christine Baranski

[ Source: Wikipedia ]