Birthday Wishes: The Female Christopher Walken, Allison Janney

Alison Janney, born 1959, is 54 today. As the headline says, she has what Roger Ebert once referred to as the Walken Factor – she rarely plays the lead role, but is almost always one of the best, most interesting and fully realized elements in any film or television show where she appears. It would be almost impossible for me to pick a favorite in a career full of amazing roles, but let it be said up front that she can currently be seen at the titular mom on the CBS show Mom and the recurring role of Margaret Scully on Showtime’s Masters of Sex.

Janney’s most prominent and multidimensional role was as CJ Cregg, the White House press secretary on NBC’s The West Wing. But again, what you know her as could be different depending entirely on who you ask. Let it be said that in an interview with the AV Club, Janney claimed that the role she is most quoted for is Loretta, the foul mouthed Minnesota trailer trash resident who helps Kirsten Dunst win a cutthroat beauty pageant in Drop Dead Gorgeous, one of the finest comedies of the late 90’s. That same year, she was Ms. Perky, the erotica-writing guidance counselor in 10 Things I Hate About You, and Barbara Fitts, the comatose wife of Chris Cooper in American Beauty. Kids would recognize her voice behind Peach the starfish in Finding Nemo and Charlene Doofenshmirtz in the Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb. She played Juno’s stepmother and Emma Stone’s mother in The Help. And in a single scene, she gave much of the emotional weight to Kenneth Lonergan’s long-delayed Margaret, playing the victim of a bus accident.

She appeared earlier this year in The Way, Way Back. Next year, she’ll be in the as-yet-untitled romantic comedy from Marc Lawrence, play Melissa McCarthy’s mom in a comedy called Tammy, and have another voice role in Mr. Peabody and Sherman. Finally, she’s the subject of my personal favorite scene on Showtime’s Weeds, playing a hippie-dippie lawyer who tells protagonist Nancy Botwin all the ins and outs of drug laws in California, awesomely. YouTube it!

Also born today:

Savion Glover (40)

Sandrine Holt (41)

Jodie Foster (51)

Meg Ryan (52)

Ted Turner (75)