Lauren Helen Graham born March 16, [ 1 ] is an American actress and author. Graham was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her mother, Donna Grant, was a fashion buyer, and her father, Lawrence Graham, a candy industry lobbyist who was president of the National Confectioners Association. Graham was five years old when her parents divorced, and she moved to the Virginia suburbs of the Washington, DC metropolitan area with her father, who became a congressional staffer. Her mother left to pursue a music career [ 8 ] and lived in London until her death in , at the age of She said, "I thought I kind of had it best.
My dad has a very mellow way about him and I was a self-starter as a kid. I liked a certain amount of being on my own. It just worked great for me. Her British half-sister from her mother's second marriage, Shade Grant, works at a talent agency. As a girl, Graham rode horses competitively, but soon switched to acting, [ 14 ] honing her talent at Langley High School , where she took part in the drill team and graduated in She graduated from Barnard in with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature.
Between and , Graham became a regular guest star on several NBC shows. She played a graduate student who caught the eye of Dick on 3rd Rock from the Sun ; Richard's overly optimistic girlfriend on Caroline in the City ; and Jerry 's speed-dial ranking girlfriend on Seinfeld. She also portrayed an antagonizing but friendship-starved efficiency expert on NewsRadio. In addition to her many guest starring and co-starring roles on prime-time television, Graham starred in four failed sitcoms, Townies with Molly Ringwald and Jenna Elfman ; [ 23 ] [ 24 ] Good Company ; Conrad Bloom ; and M.
In , Graham landed her breakthrough role on Gilmore Girls as Lorelai Gilmore —a witty "thirty-something" raising her teenage daughter in small-town Connecticut. Graham said she felt "really connected to the material" [ 25 ] and the script for the series resonated with her due to its complexities: "To me, this was one of the first times that I looked at something and I was like, 'It's serious and it's funny!
It's deep and it's light,' especially then, I had never seen before. TV Guide reported that she received the position in an attempt to persuade her to sign for an eighth season. Graham returned to her guest-starring roots when she portrayed herself in two episodes of NBC 's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.
