Julia Sweeney

Julia Sweeney, the actress and comedienne recognized above all for her unsettlingly androgynous creation Pat, entered the world in Spokane, Washington. Her initial foray into the entertainment industry came not onstage but in accounting, where she spent more than five years at Columbia Studios’ Los Angeles headquarters. Only afterward did she commit to performing, enrolling at the Groundlings Theater and sharing classes with Lisa Kudrow, later the star of Friends. Through intensive work on improvisation and sketch composition, she earned a spot on the Saturday Night Live cast in 1990.

During her tenure, Pat quickly became a viewer favorite; once she left the series in 1994, Sweeney took the role to the big screen in the feature It’s Pat. The film’s release coincided with profound personal upheaval: her marriage ended, her brother Mike succumbed to lymphoma after she cared for him through his final illness, and she herself received a cervical-cancer diagnosis. Three days after Mike’s death she underwent a hysterectomy; during convalescence she began shaping her accumulated losses into the one-woman monologue God Said “Ha!,” which first opened in San Francisco in 1995. Praised for its candor, humor, and intimate portrait of family, the piece transferred to Broadway, and a two-disc recording of the performance appeared in 1997.