Jane LynchJANE LYNCH is one of those actresses you know you've seen somewhere, but you cannot quite place the name to the face. A quick perusal of her resume will reveal that she has guest-starred on many TV shows. She played Pacey Witter's mom on Dawson's Creek, Professor Carnes on Felicity and Maxine on Desperate Housewives.
But, perhaps she is best known for her role as the butch dog handler from the indie cult phenomenon, Best in Show, or as Steve Carell's sex-starved boss in The 40 Year Old Virgin.
Now fans will get to know her in yet another role: As Victoria Ratchford in Lifetime Television's new improv sitcom Lovespring International. Lynch portrays the owner of a matchmaking agency that's run by an eclectic group of dysfunctional misfits.
Jane began acting in high school and started honing her craft as she secretly majored in acting at Illinois State (she didn't want her parents to find out and get mad at her). She went on to get her master's degree at Cornell, at which time she said, "I really started to think, 'Hey, I can do this!'"
AMERICA'S FAVOURITE MOM
She became involved in The Second City comedy troupe, portraying Carol Brady in The Real Life Brady Bunch. Of portraying America's favourite mom, Lynch said: "That was a gas. It was one of those times where you knew something special was going on." She was especially excited because it was a time when people were coming out and paying to see them, and not because they knew the performers or were family members, but they had heard positive word-of-mouth about the show.
All of Jane's hard work on stage paid off when she was rewarded with guest-starring roles on Party of Five, Cybill, Frasier and JAG, to name just a few. In 2000, she was offered what would be her breakout role as Christy Cummings in Christopher Guest's hilarious mockumentary Best in Show.
"I felt like I was going to be 'found out,' like they know I don't know what I'm doing. Jennifer Coolidge and I were both nervous and were very supportive of one another. We were just stumbling our way through together. As we filmed our scenes together, we thought that we were not funny. We thought he'd have nothing to work with. Then we saw the film, and Christopher Guest pieced it together in such a way, it showed his true genius. I was just so glad to be a part of it."
SUPERIOR COMEDIC TIMING
With Jane's natural improv skills and superior comedic timing, it's no wonder that Eric McCormack (executive producer of Lovespring) came a-callin' for Jane to be in his latest project for Lifetime Television. Like many projects she had done in the past, Lovespring International is a sketch comedy with no script: The actors have an outline of the episode, and the meat of the show comes from their minds and where the moment takes them.
With a star-studded list of guest stars such as Sean Hayes, McCormack, Mindy Sterling and Dave Foley, as well as hysterical comedic set-ups (One episode has the staff challenged to find a date for a man who was forced to eat his wife when they were stranded on a mountain after a plane crash!), Lovespring International has all the makings of a winning show.
Jane hopes that with her new show, "people get hooked onto the characters and come back to be entertained week after week. It's almost like British comedy. It's not set-up, then joke, set-up, then joke. We're like normal people; we don't know where it's all going until we get there. Hopefully, this will keep people coming back."
