Teri Hatcher Bio

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Teri Hatcher Pictures

Teri Lynn Hatcher (born December 8, 1964) is an American actress and is best known for her roles as Lois Lane in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, as Susan Mayer in Desperate Housewives and as Paris Carver in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her role as Susan Mayer on the television series Desperate Housewives in 2005. In the same year she won the Screen Actor's Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a female actress in a comedy series and was also nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, but lost out to fellow cast member and close friend, Felicity Huffman.

Teri Hatcher: Early life

Hatcher was born in Palo Alto, California, the daughter of Esther (née Beshur), a computer programmer who worked for Lockheed Martin, and Owen W. Hatcher, a nuclear physicist and electrical engineer. Hatcher's father is of Welsh and Choctaw Native American descent, and her mother is of half Lebanese and half French/German descent. Hatcher grew up in Sunnyvale, California. An only child, she attended Mango Junior High (now Sunnyvale Middle School), Fremont High School in Sunnyvale and De Anza College in Cupertino. As an undergraduate she studied mathematics and engineering.

In March 2006, Hatcher revealed to Vanity Fair that she was sexually abused from the age of five by Richard Hayes Stone, an uncle by marriage who was later divorced by Hatcher's aunt. Her parents, she said, were unaware of the abuse at the time. In 2002, she assisted Santa Clara County prosecutors with their indictment of Stone for a more recent molestation that led his female victim to commit suicide at the age of fourteen. Stone pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In an interview appearing in Vanity Fair, Hatcher said she told the prosecutors about her own abuse because she was haunted by thoughts of the 14-year-old girl who shot herself, and feared Stone might escape conviction. Stone died of colon cancer on August 19, 2008, having served six years of his sentence.

Teri Hatcher: Career

Hatcher studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater. One of her early jobs (in 1984) was as a NFL cheerleader with the San Francisco 49ers. During this time, she also appeared as one of the mermaids on the show The Love Boat in its final season.

Hatcher with her Lois & Clark co-star Dean Cain rehearsing for the 45th Emmy Awards on September 19, 1993

Hatcher landed a co-starring role in 1993, opposite Dean Cain in Lois and Clark. She portrayed Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane in the television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman from 1993 to 1997. At the height of the show's popularity in 1995, a picture of Hatcher wrapped in a Superman cape was reportedly downloaded on the Internet 20,000 times. "It's a great shot," she told Entertainment Weekly. "Not so much because it's me. It's just cool-looking."

Hatcher beat out Monica Bellucci for the role of Paris Carver in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Hatcher was three months pregnant at the filming's start, by her then-husband, Jon Tenney. Her publicist said the pregnancy did not affect the production schedule. Hatcher later regretted playing Paris Carver, saying, "It's such an artificial kind of character to be playing that you don't get any special satisfaction from it." She was voted the world's sexiest woman by readers of popular men's magazine FHM in the same year. Hatcher also appeared in films such as Spy Kids (2001), Dead in the Water (1991), 2 Days in the Valley (1996) and The Cool Surface (1994). She co-starred with Alec Baldwin in Heaven's Prisoners (1996), which failed at the box office. ABC cancelled Lois & Clark in 1997. She made a guest appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Lt. Robinson and had a recurring role on MacGyver as Penny Parker, a high-strung, young woman who always seemed to get into trouble.

Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher at the 1993 Emmy Awards.

Hatcher made a much-discussed guest appearance on an episode of Seinfeld, in which her character, Sidra, broke up with Jerry because she found out Jerry was trying to have Elaine surreptitiously determine whether Sidra had breast implants. ("They're real...and they're spectacular!")

Hatcher appeared in a series of Radio Shack television commercials alongside NFL player Howie Long. They remain close friends and together have bought farm land on the outskirts of Los Angeles, with the intent of eventually raising endangered species.

Hatcher hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live in 1996. She beat out four other actresses for one of the lead role on ABC's Desperate Housewives, on which she stars as Susan Mayer, a role for which she won the Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Golden Globe Award in January 2005. In 2005, Hatcher won the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) award in the same category. In July 2005, she was nominated for an Emmy Award as Best Actress in a Comedy Series for the role, along with co-stars Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman.

As of April 2006, Hatcher is one of the highest paid television actresses in the United States. She reportedly earns $285,000 per episode of Desperate Housewives. In May 2006, she released her first book, Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life.

On April 9, 2008, Hatcher sang on Idol Gives Back singing Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats".

Teri Hatcher: Personal life

Between 1985 and 1988, she had a relationship with her MacGyver costar Richard Dean Anderson. Hatcher married Marcus Leithold on June 4, 1988; they divorced the following year. On May 27, 1994, she married actor Jon Tenney; they had a daughter, Emerson Rose, on November 10, 1997, and divorced in March 2003. Hatcher has also been dating Stephen Kay, who played Reginald, the Quartermaines' butler, on General Hospital. Since then she and Stephen have broken up.

In June 2007, Hatcher appeared on The Paul O'Grady Show, where she revealed that she writes a column in Glamour.

In February 2008, Hydroderm sued Hatcher for breach of contract, claiming that she had promoted the beauty products of other companies. She insisted that her promotion of CityLips' lip plumper did not affect the Hydroderm deal. Her attorney Alan Wertheimer called the lawsuit an "unjustified and public assault" on her "good name, reputation and celebrity." Her lawyer persuaded a judge in Los Angeles to move the case to arbitration.