Actor / Director Profile

The daughter of tax specialist S. J. Lasser, comedy actress Louise Lasser must have started off lightening things up considerably in her own household. She first won notice singing in Greenwich Village dives, improvisational revues and on Broadway in the early 1960s. Probably best known as the second Mrs. Woody Allen, Louise appeared with the comic master in several of his inaugural film romps -- particularly Take the Money and Run (1969), Bananas (1971), and Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972). Following the end of their three-year marriage, she struck out on her own and appeared to good advantage in Slither (1973) and the dark comedy mini-movie Isn't It Shocking? (1973) (TV). She hit cult status as the titular pig-tailed heroine of the nighttime soap serial "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" (1976), in which she buffed up her kooky, enervated, neurotic comedy image. Slim-hipped for much of her early life, she grew unrecognizably plumper and matronly in later years. A series of quirky guest spots followed in the 1980s and '90s playing everything from aging hippies to whacked-out fortune tellers and bar flies. She also sought out a secondary career as an acting teacher in New York City.