Teri Hatcher
Teri Hatcher is an actor, born 1964.
A decade of Teri Hatcher's career happened before anyone was really watching: Penny Parker on MacGyver, Kiki in Tango & Cash, a soap actress in Soapdish, small parts in The Big Picture and 2 Days in the Valley. She was cast for the face and given very little to do with it.
Lois & Clark, which ran from 1993 to 1997, is where that changed. Her Lois Lane is impatient, unimpressed and fast, a screwball comedy lead standing in the middle of a superhero show, and the series works because she treats Superman as an inconvenience rather than a miracle. Tomorrow Never Dies put a colder version of the same poise on screen in 1997 as Paris Carver.
Desperate Housewives, from 2004 to 2012, turned it comic again. Susan Mayer is the clumsy one, the character asked to fall over furniture and be sincere in the same scene, and Hatcher won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a musical or comedy for it, along with three Screen Actors Guild awards and a Primetime Emmy nomination.
The most durable thing she has done may be the least like her. In Coraline she voices both the real mother, busy and short with her daughter, and the Other Mother, who is neither, and the second performance is frightening precisely because it starts so warm.
Movies (17)
- Coraline (2009)
- Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
- Spy Kids (2001)
- Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014)
- Planes (2013)
- Tango & Cash (1989)
- Soapdish (1991)
- 2 Days in the Valley (1996)
- Straight Talk (1992)
- The Big Picture (1989)
- Sundown (2016)
- Christmas at the Chalet (2023)
- Heaven's Prisoners (1996)
- Resurrecting the Champ (2007)
- Momentum (2003)
- Running Mates (2000)
- Madness in the Method (2019)
TV (10)
Where to start with Teri Hatcher
The place to start is Coraline, and not only because it is the best film on this list. Hatcher plays a mother and a much better mother, and hearing one voice run both is the point of the casting.
After that, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman for the version of Lois Lane who treats the whole premise as a scheduling problem, and Desperate Housewives for the comic register that won her the awards, though the show is long and sampling is allowed. Tomorrow Never Dies gives her a small Bond part she makes count. If you want her early, Soapdish and 2 Days in the Valley are more interesting than Tango & Cash, and WondLa is the recent voice work worth hearing.