1. Ann Magnuson is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer.
21 Facts About Ann Magnuson
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Ann Magnuson was described by The New York Times in 1990 as "An endearing theatrical chameleon who has as many characters at her fingertips as Lily Tomlin does".
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Ann Magnuson was born in Charleston, West Virginia, to a journalist mother and a lawyer father.
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Ann Magnuson had a brother, Bobby, who died in 1988 of complications from AIDS.
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Ann Magnuson attended Holz Elementary and George Washington High School in Charleston.
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Ann Magnuson created such characters as Anoushka, a Soviet lounge singer, wearing a wig backwards and singing mock-Russian lyrics to pop music standards, and separately sang in an all-girl percussion group, Pulsallama, whose 1982 single "The Devil Lives In My Husband's Body" was a housewife's lament of a spouse who appears to be possessed.
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Later, in 1987, Ann Magnuson fronted the satirical faux-heavy metal band Vulcan Death Grip.
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Ann Magnuson made her film debut in the 1981 film Vortex.
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Ann Magnuson went on to star in Seidelman's Making Mr Right, a poorly received science-fiction romance about an android played by John Malkovich.
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Concurrently, Ann Magnuson developed an underground following as lead vocalist of the band Bongwater, formed in 1985 with producer-musician Mark Kramer.
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Ann Magnuson co-hosted Alive from Off Center during its 1988 season, taking over from fellow performance artist Laurie Anderson, who had hosted the series the year before.
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From 1989 to 1992, Ann Magnuson played Catherine Hughes, the comically hip editor-in-chief of a Chicago magazine in the television sitcom Anything But Love, opposite Jamie Lee Curtis and comedian Richard Lewis, and played a liberal political commentator on comedian Wanda Sykes' 2003 Fox sitcom Wanda at Large.
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Ann Magnuson appeared in the 1998 music video for Jerry Cantrell's "My Song".
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Ann Magnuson played Sister Elizabeth Donderstock in the play The Book of Liz, written by Amy Sedaris and David Sedaris, in May 2005 at the 2nd Stage Theatre in Hollywood, California.
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Ann Magnuson has a thoroughly charming presence [but] her stories of celebrity-studded Oscar parties, kid-filled raves, a wealthy dotcom suitor, and so on, come off as utterly self-absorbed and trivial.
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For eight years, Ann Magnuson wrote a monthly column, "LA Woman", in the magazine Paper, as well as an accompanying blog.
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In 2007 and 2008, Magnuson performed in a cabaret act, Dueling Harps, with Adam Dugas, Mia Theodoratus, and Alexander Rannie.
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In 2009, Ann Magnuson created a one-woman performance piece, Back Home Again, that was commissioned by Charleston, West Virginia's FestiVall.
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In 2018, Ann Magnuson joined the cast of The Man in the High Castle, for five episodes, as Caroline Abendsen, the wife of the title character Hawthorne Abendsen, played by Stephen Root.
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Ann Magnuson appeared in the first season of Star Trek: Picard as Fleet Admiral Kirsten Clancy, the commander-in-chief of Starfleet.
21.
Ann Magnuson participated in a staged conversation about Keith Haring with Steven Reigns at The Broad for World AIDS Day 2022.