Lauren Tom
Lauren Tom is an actor, born 1961.
Tom came out of the theatre, won an Obie, and got her first wide film exposure in The Joy Luck Club in 1993. What happened after that is one of the odder shapes a career can take. On screen she is best remembered as Julie, the girlfriend Friends spent a season teaching its audience to resent. Off screen she became one of the busiest voices in American animation.
The voice work is the real body of it. Amy Wong on Futurama since 1999, through the original run, the revivals and four feature-length films. Minh and Connie Souphanousinphone on King of the Hill, two generations of the same family. Dana Tan on Batman Beyond, Gizmo and Jinx on Teen Titans, Angela Chen on Superman: The Animated Series. That is a large share of the cartoons a specific generation grew up inside, all delivered by one performer with an unusually elastic register: she can move from bored teenager to scolding mother inside a single line reading.
The live-action work continued in parallel, sitcom guest spots, Bad Santa, a run on Supernatural, then Celia Mack on Andi Mack. She belongs to the category of performer whose name is not famous and whose work is everywhere.
Movies (40)
- Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
- Mulan II (2004)
- Wall Street (1987)
- Scooby-Doo! Camp Scare (2010)
- Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown (2017)
- Bad Santa (2003)
- See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989)
- Blue Steel (1990)
- The Joy Luck Club (1993)
- Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama (2005)
- Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000)
- Futurama: Bender's Big Score (2007)
- Justice League: Gods and Monsters (2015)
- In Good Company (2004)
- When a Man Loves a Woman (1994)
- Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998)
- North (1994)
- Mr. Jones (1993)
- Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation Z.E.R.O. (2006)
- Futurama: Bender's Game (2008)
- Cadillac Man (1990)
- The Batman/Superman Movie: World's Finest (1997)
- Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs (2008)
- Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder (2009)
- Grandma (2015)
- Teacher's Pet (2004)
- One True Loves (2023)
- Codename: Kids Next Door: Operation I.N.T.E.R.V.I.E.W.S. (2008)
- Batman Beyond: The Movie (1999)
- Escape to Witch Mountain (1995)
TV (47)
- Rick and Morty (2013)
- Friends (1994)
- Teen Titans Go! (2013)
- Futurama (1999)
- King of the Hill (1997)
- Dexter's Laboratory (1996)
- The Facts of Life (1979)
- Star Trek: Lower Decks (2020)
- The Division (2001)
- Superman: The Animated Series (1996)
- Solar Opposites (2020)
- Batman Beyond (1999)
- Teen Titans (2003)
- What's New, Scooby-Doo? (2002)
- My Adventures with Superman (2023)
- Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia (2016)
- My Wife and Kids (2001)
- Pepper Ann (1997)
- Disenchantment (2018)
- Pound Puppies (2010)
- Dragons: The Nine Realms (2021)
- Reading Rainbow (1983)
- All Grown Up! (2003)
- American Dragon: Jake Long (2005)
- Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero (2014)
- Grace Under Fire (1993)
- The Zeta Project (2001)
- Andi Mack (2017)
- W.I.T.C.H. (2004)
- Men in Trees (2006)
Where to start with Lauren Tom
Her longest single performance is Amy Wong, so Futurama is the honest answer. Amy is a character built almost entirely out of vocal choices, a rich, spoiled, fundamentally kind intern whose accent shifts with her mood, and Tom has been refining her since 1999.
For range, put King of the Hill next: she plays a mother and a daughter in the same family and you would not guess it was one performer. Batman Beyond gives her a straight dramatic register as Dana Tan, and Teen Titans gives her two of the loudest villains on the show. On camera, Friends is the role people know, and Julie is worth revisiting now that nobody is asking you to dislike her, because the writing is unkind and the performance is not. Andi Mack is the late one worth finding, a warm and genuinely well written mother.
Futurama and the long-running animation
Amy Wong has run for more than twenty-five years across the series and four films, and Tom voices her mother as well. King of the Hill is the other decades-long job, where she plays both Minh and her daughter Connie.
The DC animated universe
A long run in the Bruce Timm animated shows, which are still the best-looking American superhero cartoons anyone has made. Batman Beyond is the one to start with, and Return of the Joker is much darker than its rating suggested at the time.
The live-action roles
Tom worked on screen for a decade before the voice career took over. Friends is the part everyone remembers, Grandma is the recent independent film worth finding, and Wall Street is the early credit almost nobody notices.