Jane Krakowski
Jane Krakowski is an actor, born 1968.
Jane Krakowski turns up as Cousin Vicki in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), a teenager stealing scenes off adults, and she has been playing variations on a single glorious idea ever since: vanity as an athletic discipline. Her characters do not merely want attention, they train for it.
The run of three television roles is the career. Elaine Vassal on Ally McBeal (1997 to 2002) was the secretary who treated the office as a stage. Jenna Maroney on 30 Rock (2006 to 2013) is the full realisation, a woman with a bottomless need to be looked at, delivered with musical-theatre precision, and it brought her four Primetime Emmy nominations for supporting actress in a comedy. Jacqueline on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015 to 2020) took the same appetite and gave it money and a house, and brought another nomination.
What keeps this from being one joke told three times is the technique underneath it. She sings, she can land a punchline on an unstressed syllable, which is why the absurd line readings never feel improvised. The voice work rests on the same skill: the sloth in Ice Age, Giselle in Open Season, the mother in The Willoughbys. And there is a quieter Krakowski when a director asks for one, notably Mrs. Dickinson in Dickinson, where the comedy comes from a woman keeping everything in rather than letting it out.
Movies (26)
- Ice Age (2002)
- Pixels (2015)
- National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
- Open Season (2006)
- Open Season 2 (2008)
- Fatal Attraction (1987)
- Pretty Persuasion (2005)
- Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)
- The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000)
- My Little Pony: A New Generation (2021)
- Dance with Me (1998)
- The Willoughbys (2020)
- Go (1999)
- Alfie (2004)
- The Rocker (2008)
- Mrs. Winterbourne (1996)
- Your Christmas or Mine 2 (2023)
- Marci X (2003)
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (2020)
- Adult Beginners (2014)
- The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Mystery of the Blues (1999)
- Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (2008)
- 30 Rock: A One-Time Special (2020)
- A Christmas Carol (2004)
- Henchmen (2018)
- The Man with the Bag (2026)
TV (15)
- LIVE with Kelly and Mark (1988)
- 30 Rock (2006)
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015)
- Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (2017)
- Dickinson (2019)
- CatDog (1998)
- Match Game (2016)
- Ally McBeal (1997)
- Schmigadoon! (2021)
- Rocket Power (1999)
- Difficult People (2015)
- Name That Tune (2021)
- AJ and the Queen (2020)
- Ziwe (2021)
- Alex Haley's Queen (1993)
Where to start with Jane Krakowski
30 Rock is the obvious start and the correct one. Jenna Maroney is one of the great American comic monsters, and Krakowski plays her without a shred of pity, which is what makes her funny rather than sad.
Then Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which gives the same character wealth and a slightly larger soul, and Ally McBeal if you want to see the prototype being built in the late nineties. For range, Dickinson is the one to argue with people about: she plays repression instead of display and it works. Schmigadoon! is the musical showcase, so it is the closest thing on screen to what she does on a stage. Animation is the family route, and Ice Age is where most children first heard her. Two small oddities to finish: National Lampoon's Vacation, where the whole thing started, and Go, a jagged nineties film that uses her very differently.