Julie Kathleen Payne is an American television, film and stage actress who, in a career lasting over four decades, has specialized primarily in comedy roles as well as voice acting. She was a cast member in three short-lived network sitcoms during 1983–1986, and appeared in about twenty feature films and over a hundred episodes of TV series as well as providing voices for scores of TV animated shows.

Early life

A native of Oregon, Julie Payne was born in Sweet Home,^[1] near the lake and river areas adjoining the Cascade Range. Growing up in the state's second-largest city, Eugene, she attended South Eugene High School, where she performed in a number of school productions, including The Music Man, The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Lark and Once Upon a Mattress. After graduating in 1964, she moved to California, where she studied drama at Santa Clara University and French at San Francisco State University.

Career

Leaving college without a degree, Payne traveled to Europe, where she hitchhiked through various locations and, upon returning to San Francisco during the 1967 Haight-Ashbury "Summer of Love", became a member of the improvisational comedy/satire group, The Committee, remaining with it, on and off, until 1974.^[1]

During her years with The Committee, she began appearing in films (her on-screen debut occurred as part of the group's performance at the September 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival, held a month after Woodstock, and is included in the 1971 concert film, Celebration at Big Sur).

At the start of the 1970s, she was seen in bit parts, without the group, in The Strawberry Statement and The Candidate, as well as on television (The Flip Wilson Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Midnight Special, The Streets of San Francisco and others).

In 1976, two years after leaving The Committee, she and another former member of the group, Ruth Silveira, wrote and starred in People Pie, their two-woman satirical revue which they premiered in Los Angeles and took on the road, including to Eugene, its initial stop, and her first visit to the city since leaving it in 1964.^[1]

Between February 1983 and June 1986, she was a regular in three network series, but each lasted less than three months. In CBS' hour-long 1983 humorous fantasy, Wizards and Warriors, she played good queen Lattinia, one of many characters in a large ensemble cast, but the special-effects-laden expensive series was a Saturday-night ratings failure, lasting only from February 26 to May 14. She also starred in "WKRP in Cincinnati" as Buffy, one of Johnny Fever's former girlfriends.

Starting in mid-1980s, Payne shifted her focus to television voice work. She was heard in the animated segments of The Tracey Ullman Show and provided various voices, primarily those of Dr. Liz Wilson and Lanolin in a series of specials based on the comic strip Garfield, as well as in the series Garfield and Friends and The Garfield Show.

In 1993, she played Embarcadero Bank worker Eleanor Cooke (AKA Former Smash Club cage dancer Ginger Snap) in the Full House episode "Smash Club: the Next Generation". Payne portrayed the recurring character of Larry David's mother-in-law on his HBO satirical comedy series, Curb Your Enthusiasm.^[2]

Filmography

Film

Television