Alex Borstein

She had supporting roles in numerous films, including Showtime (2002), Bad Santa (2003), Kicking & Screaming (2005), Little Man (2006), Killers (2010), Ted (2012), A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), Love the Coopers (2015), and The Bad Guys (2022) as well as its sequel (2025).

Alex Borstein studied at San Francisco State University and Chatsworth High School. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are United States. Distinctions recorded are Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance.

• Name — Alex Borstein • Birth Name — Alexandrea Borstein • Born — 15 February 1971 • Birthplace — Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. • Education — San Francisco State University (BA) • Occupation — * Actress • comedian • writer • producer • Years Active — 1993–present • Children — 2

Borstein was born on February 15, 1971 in Highland Park, Illinois to a Jewish family. Her parents, Irving and Judy (Grünfeld) Borstein, are both mental health professionals. She has two older brothers. Her father is from Atlanta and comes from an Orthodox Jewish family of Polish immigrants, Paul and Bessie (Kaufman) Borstein. She has stated her father’s family is also of Russian descent. Her mother, Judy, and maternal grandmother, Vera Winternitz, are Holocaust survivors, born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. They immigrated to the United States after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Borstein has described distant Hungarian-Mongolian ancestry. Borstein was raised in Deerfield, Illinois, before her family moved to Northridge, California, a city of Los Angeles. She graduated from Chatsworth High School in 1989, and San Francisco State University, where she studied rhetoric.

Borstein trained in improvisational comedy at the ACME Comedy Theater, near Hollywood, where she met her writing partner and future husband Jackson Douglas. Shortly after they began working together on the animated series The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper and Pinky and the Brain, Borstein left her position at an ad agency – where she had written print ads for Barbie – to become a full-time writer. In 1996, while still writing for Casper, Borstein worked on the show Power Rangers Zeo as the voice of Queen Machina, the queen of the Machine Empire. In 1997, Borstein became a cast member on the third season of the sketch comedy show MADtv after being discovered by a casting agent while performing with the ACME Comedy Theater troupe at the Big Stinkin' International Improv & Sketch Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas. Borstein was best known on MADtv for her character Ms. Swan (owner of the Gorgeous Pretty Beauty Nail Salon); her other recurring characters included Eracist Anne, "Stick Chick" Echo, singer Jasmine Wayne-Wayne, child prodigy Karen Goddard, lounge singer Shaunda, News at Six outside-the-studio reporter Sue Napersville, and Cordo the GAP troll. When Seth Green made recurring appearances on the show as mean boss Mr. Brightling, Borstein would play his mother, Mama Brightling.

While working on MADtv, Borstein met Seth MacFarlane, who was then preparing to launch the animated sitcom Family Guy on Fox. MacFarlane was originally supposed to create animated shorts for MADtv but declined in favor of creating an independent series. MacFarlane cast Borstein as the voice of character Lois Griffin, where incidentally, she yet again played the mother of Seth Green, who voiced Chris Griffin. After the show's debut in January 1999, Family Guy was cancelled by the network twice in 2000 and 2002, the latter year the same year she left MADtv after 5 years at the end of Season 7 (2001-2002 season). Family Guy eventually returned after its subsequent cancellation 3 years later in 2005. As well as her role as the voice performer for Lois and several other characters (including a brief appearance as Ms. Swan in a 2005 episode), she is also a producer and staff writer. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for the episode "Lois Comes Out of Her Shell" in 2013. In 2000, Borstein was cast as Sookie St. James in the WB drama Gilmore Girls. She portrayed Sookie in the pilot but her MADtv contract prevented her from continuing in the role. Borstein made recurring appearances on Gilmore Girls throughout the show's run, first as the harpist Drella and later as the stylist Miss Celine. As a film actor, she played Ms. Ungermeyer the school principal in The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), the best friend of Halle Berry's character in Catwoman (2004), and an employee at CBS News in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005). She also had a small role in the movie Bad Santa (2003) and an uncredited cameo as an obnoxious coffee shop patron in the Will Ferrell movie Kicking & Screaming (2005). On some commercials, she sometimes voices Olive Oyl from Popeye and Betty Boop. Borstein was a co-host of GSN's Celebrity Blackjack in 2004. She made at least three guest appearances, once as Lois Griffin, on the Comedy Central animated program Drawn Together. Borstein was cast as a press secretary in the 2007 sitcom pilot The Thick of It, but the series was not picked up for broadcast. She was seen in the 2009 comedy For Christ's Sake, which was directed by her then husband Jackson Douglas. Borstein's production company is called Crackerpants, Inc. In 2007, it released the DVD Drop Dead Gorgeous (in a Down-to-Earth Bombshell Sort of Way), a recording of a live performance at the Alex Theatre with Teddy Towne as the opening act. The title comes from one of many female character breakdowns Borstein reads from to illustrate sexism in the industry.

• Illustration — Borstein at the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con Borstein has made several supporting appearances in such comedic films as Killers (2010), Dinner for Schmucks (2010), Ted (2012), ParaNorman (2012), A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), The Angry Birds Movie (2016), and The Bad Guys (2022). In 2010, Borstein joined the first season staff of the Showtime comedy-drama series Shameless, as a writer and supervising producer. In its second season, she held the position of writer and consulting producer. She also guest-starred as Lou Deckner in numerous episodes of the series, beginning in the first-season episode "But at Last Came a Knock." She also appeared as a comedian contestant on IFC's short-lived comedy-driven game show Bunk in 2012. Borstein starred as Dawn Forchette on the HBO comedy series Getting On, which is a remake of a British series with the same name. The series has gained positive reviews and earned multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations. It aired from 2013 to 2015. From 2017 to 2023, Borstein starred as Susie Myerson in the Amazon Prime Video historical comedy-drama series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, for which she received significant critical acclaim and won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

Borstein met actor and writer Jackson Douglas while she was studying improv at the ACME Comedy Theatre. Douglas proposed to her during the taping of a MADtv sketch and they were married in 1999. Douglas filed for divorce in October 2014 and it was finalized in 2017. Borstein and Douglas have a son and a daughter. Borstein, who is a carrier of hemophilia herself, is a longtime advocate for the National Hemophilia Foundation.

According to Borstein, "We do Shabbat every Friday night. I'm not [someone] that goes to temple all the time—I'm a High Holidays temple goer, and that's about it. But there are traditions", she said in an interview. "Having a mother and a grandmother who are Holocaust survivors, I feel a large responsibility to continue that culture and those traditions—not necessarily the dogma, but what it feels like to be Jewish. I want to instill that in my kids."

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1993–1994 — Mighty Morphin Power Rangers — Various voices — 4 episodes • 1996 — Power Rangers Zeo — Queen Machina / Robocupid (voice) — 42 episodes • Big Bad Beetleborgs — Cataclaws (voice) — Episode: "Yo Ho Borgs" • 1997–2009, 2016 — MADtv — Herself / Various characters — Main role; 134 episodes Also writer • 1999–present — Family Guy — Lois Griffin / Barbara Pewterschmidt / Tricia Takanawa (1999-2021) / Various voices — Main role; 424 episodes Also writer and producer • 2000–2005 — Gilmore Girls — Drella / Miss Celine / Doris — 9 episodes • 2002 — Titus — Nicky — Episode: "Bachelor Party" • 2002–2003 — 3-South — Becky (voice) — 3 episodes • 2003 — Friends — Bitter Woman on Stage — Episode: "The One with the Soap Opera Party" • Frasier — Evelyn — Episode: "Farewell, Nervosa" • 2005–2022 — Robot Chicken — Various voices — 16 episodes • 2006–2016 — American Dad! — Doctor Gupta / Museum Curator (voice) — Episodes: "Roger 'n' Me" and "Garfield and Friends" • 2006 — Drawn Together — Lois Griffin / Various voices — Episodes: "A Tale of Two Cows" and "The Lemon AIDS Walk" • 2007–2009 — Slacker Cats — Latoyah (voice) — 10 episodes • 2009–2013 — The Cleveland Show — Hadassah Lowenstein / Lois Griffin / Various voices — 17 episodes • 2009 — Glenn Martin, DDS — Clerk (voice) — Episode: "Deck the Malls" • 2011–2015 — Shameless — Lou Deckner — 5 episodes; also writer and consulting producer • 2011 — Night of the Hurricane — Lois Griffin (voice) — Television special • 2012 — Hot in Cleveland — Preshi — Episode: "Rubber Ball" • Robot Chicken DC Comics Special — Wonder Woman / Giganta / Woman at Bar (voice) — Television special • 2012–2016 — Workaholics — Colleen Walker — 3 episodes • 2012–2013 — Bunheads — Sweetie Cramer / Hooker — Episodes: "Pilot" and "Channing Tatum Is a Fine Actor" • 2013–2015 — Getting On — Dawn Forchette — Main role; 18 episodes • 2014 — Robot Chicken DC Comics Special 2: Villains in Paradise — Wonder Woman (voice) — Television special • 2015 — Life in Pieces — Lynette — Episode: "Ponzi Sex Paris Bounce" • Masters of Sex — Loretta — Episode: "Monkey Business" • Robot Chicken DC Comics Special III: Magical Friendship — Wonder Woman (voice) — Television special • 2016 — Bordertown — Janice Buckwald / Becky (voice) — Main role; 12 episodes • Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life — Drella / Miss Celine — Episodes: "Winter" and "Fall" • Son of Zorn — Elizabeth — Episode: "Return of the Drinking Buddy" • 2017 — Animals. — Lois Griffin (voice) — Episode: "Pigeons." • 2017–2023 — The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — Susie Myerson — Main role; 43 episodes • 2021 — Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens — Wilma (voice) — Episode: "Tales from the Blackout" • 2022 — Resident Alien — Carlyn — Episode: "Girls' Night" • 2023 — Alex Borstein: Corsets & Clown Suits — Herself — Television special

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 2006 — Family Guy Video Game! — Lois Griffin / Various voices • 2012 — Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse • 2014 — Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff • 2022 — Warped Kart Racers — Lois Griffin — Archived recordings

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 2008–2010 — Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy — Various voices — 6 episodes • 2011 — The Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour — Wife — Episode: ”ATM” • 2024 — Hot Ones — Lois Griffin — Episode: "Peter Griffin Bares It All While Eating Spicy Wings"

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 2015 — Special Relativity — Nox / Lucinda

Alex Borstein is recorded with the occupation television actor. Borstein worked at United States. Recorded as having studied at San Francisco State University and Chatsworth High School.