Kate WalshKathleen Erin Walsh (not to be confused with the twenty-year-old British singer Kate Walsh, or the Irish politician Kate Walsh) is an American actress born on October 13, 1967, in San Jose, California to an Irish-Italian Catholic family.
She went to the University of Arizona and this is where her interest in acting began with Kate becoming involved in regional theater. She later moved to Chicago where she continued pursuing her acting training at the Piven Theater Workshop and the Chicago Shakespeare Repertory.
While in Chicago, Kate Walsh did quite a bit of theater work that included starring roles in productions Moon Under Miami, Troilus and Cressida, and the National Public Radio (NPR) play, Born Guilty.
After Chicago, Kate moved to New York City to further her acting career by joining the comedy troupe Burn Manhattan. She acted in a number of off-Broadway comedic plays, including Flight Courier and The Four Twins.
Kate made her transition to the television screen by starting out in a number of small roles in several television shows. She appeared in episodes of ER, Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order, and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, where she played a transsexual by the name of Mimosa.
Shortly after these minor television roles she decided to branch out into film as well. Her film debut was the 1996 crime drama Normal Life, where she played the sister of bank robber Chris Anderson, played by Luke Perry.
In 1997 she starred as a kleptomaniac in the short film Peppermills. Her performance earned her the Best Short Film award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1998. This is also the same year that she starred with Ken Komenich and Neil Giuntoli in Henry 2: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the sequel to the original 1986 Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
Kate also appeared in several television comedies that allowed her to use her improvisational comedy training to the fullest. She received regular roles in more prominent series like the NBC show The Mike O’Malley Show, ABC’s The Norm Show, and HBO’s The Mind of a Married Man. She also was cast in the recurring role of Drew Carey’s girlfriend, Nicki Fifer, in The Drew Carey Show. The slender five foot ten inch actress had to wear a fat-suit in order to effectively portray a woman struggling with her weight and appearance.
Other movies Kate Walsh have appeared in include 2000’s The Family Man, opposite Nicolas Cage and Tea Loni; Under the Tuscan Sun in 2003, where she was the lesbian lover of Grey’s Anatomy co-star Sandra Oh; and the 2005 comedy starring Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall, Kicking and Screaming. She also landed small roles in films After the Sunset in 2004, One Way to Valhalla in 2005, and Veritas, Prince of Truth in 2005.
Her biggest television break came in 2005 when she landed the role of saucy redheaded Doctor Addison Shepherd in the ABC hit series Grey’s Anatomy. Kate is a natural blonde and dyed her hair red specifically for this role.
In October 2006 Kate did several television commercials for the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Earlier that year, in February, she appeared on the cover of Jezebel magazine. She also appeared in the October 2006 edition of Oprah's magazine, O, in an article and picture spread for the Fall Suit Fashion Shoot. It was September 2007 that saw Kate taking that walk down the aisle with husband to be, Alex Young, a 20th Century Fox execuctive. However the marriage wasn't to last further than November 22nd 2008 when Young filed for divorce citing 'irreconcilable differences'.
Kate currently lives in Los Angeles. YUDDY |
