Background

Julia Sweeney was born on October 10, 1961, in Spokane, Washington, United States. She is a first-born into a family of Robert Mark Sweeney, an attorney and federal prosecutor, and Jeraldine Sweeney (maiden name Ivers), a homemaker.

Robert and Jeraldine had five children named William Robert Sweeney, Michael Ivers Sweeney, Jim Sweeney, and Meg Sweeney.

Two of Julia’s brothers, William and Michael died.

Education

Julia Sweeney spent her childhood in Spokane, Washington. A young girl, she demonstrated a talent for elaborating characters and imitating voices but she didn’t think about it seriously as a career by the time. However, while attending Gonzaga Preparatory School and Marycliff High School, she performed in several plays.

Then, Sweeney pursued her education at the University of Washington where she received a double diploma in Economics and European History.

Later, after graduation, Julia Sweeney came back to her childish hobby and started to study improvisation with Phil Hartman in the Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe the Groundlings.

Career

The start of Julia Sweeney’s career can be counted from her service at Columbia Studios in Los Angeles where she worked as an accountant from 1983 to 1988. After the years of frustration in the accounting department, Sweeney joined the Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe, the Groundlings firstly as an apprentice and then as a performer.

It was there where she elaborated personages which would be later used as the characters on the stage, in movies, and on television. In addition to Mea Culpa developed in collaboration with Jim Emerson, Sweeney created the androgynous Pat Riley along with her then-husband Stephen Hibbert. The character was introduced for the first time during her stint with the Groundlings, but it became known to a wide audience after Sweeney was invited in 1990 to join the cast of the long-running Saturday Night Live, a late-night television sketch comedy program.

In 1992 she wrote an autobiographical picture book spoof of Pat, ‘It’s Pat! My Life Exposed’, with the help of Christine Zander. Although the character made Sweeney popular as an actress, the personage eclipsed almost everything she made in the Saturday Night. Dispirited, she left the show in 1994 and concentrated on ‘It's Pat’ movie co-written on the base of her infamous SNL personage. It was not received well by critics and did not fare well at the box office. The same year, Sweeney played a cameo in the movie Pulp Fiction.

A cascade of unlucky events in the profession was weighted by the dramas in the actress’s personal life. The death of her brother Mike and her own disease pushed Julia to write her first autobiographical monologue ‘God Said, “Ha!”’. She first performed with the monologue in Los Angeles alternative comedy club, the Un-Cabaret, and then developed it into the same-name one-woman stage show that was presented to the public for the first time at San Francisco's Magic Theater in 1995.

The second monologue turned into a show, ‘In the Family Way’, followed in 2003 with a debut at the stage of Ars Nova Theatre. The third one, reflecting Sweeney’s experience of becoming an atheist, ‘Letting Go of God’ appeared the next year. The show versions of all the three monologues were issued on CD and DVD.

In addition to the role she played in the Pat movie written on her own, Julia Sweeney also appeared as an actress in such films like ‘Gremlins 2: The New Batch’, ‘Coneheads’, ‘Clockstoppers’, ‘Whatever It Takes’, and ‘Stuart Little’. Sweeney was an invited actress in one of the episodes of ‘Sex and the City’ where she has also served as a consultant to its last three seasons as well as on the second season of ‘Desperate Housewives’.

She has also served as voiceover actor on a number of motion pictures, including the ABC animated series ‘The Goode Family’, ‘Back at the Barnyard’, and an animation film ‘Monsters University’.

Nowadays, Sweeney is engaged in the Hulu series project Shrill.

Achievements

• Julia Sweeney is an accomplished actress and author whose contributions to the movie industry have been marked by such awards like the L.A. Weekly Best Written Play Award, and New York Comedy Festival's Audience Award.
  
  She has also been nominated for Grammy with a CD version of her ‘God Said Ha!’ show. The movie version of the show produced by Quentin Tarantino was given the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle Film Festival.
  
  Sweeney’s Letting Go of God monologue was featured several times by Richard Dawkins’s in his book ‘The God Delusion’.

Works

More photos

• audio

  • Letting Go of God

    (Equally comedic and insightful, Letting Go of God is Swee...)

    2006

• audiobook

  • If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

    (The delightful former cast member of Saturday Night Live ...)

    2013

• book

  • It's Pat: My Life Exposed

    (An up-close and personal peek into the life of America's ...)

    1992
  • God Said, 'Ha!'

    (The remarkably funny and touching monologue about a famil...)

    2008

• movie

  • It's Pat

    (Audiences nationwide cheered Pat on TV's Saturday Night L...)

    1994

Religion

Julia Sweeney was brought up in Catholic traditions but later became an atheist.

Views

Quotations: "I think one of the basic tasks in life – one of the nice things we can do for each other – is to take things that are horrible and scary and make them acceptable and less frightening and, if possible, funny. It feels great to succeed at that."

"I'm not a standup. I don't really have jokes. I don't have 10 minutes. It took a while for me to realize this."

"I'm not an activist. I'm trying to get off the whole atheist racket."

"To a certain extent I am taking a leap of faith. I'm adding up the evidence on either side, and I'm seeing the evidence of there not being a God is overwhelming compared to the evidence for there being a God."

"It's so weird to have someone tell you you're sick when you feel really healthy and good."

"Because death and illness are the most horrible things in life, of course that's where the most absurdly funny things are going to happen."

"Why not try thinking of your life as hilarious rather than nightmarish?"

Membership

Julia Sweeney was a member of Delta Gamma sorority while studying at the University of Washington.

Connections

Julia Sweeney was married to a TV writer and actor Steven Hibbert at the end of the 1980s. They divorced in 1994.

On May 3, 2008, Sweeney formed a family with a scientist Michael Blum. They have a daughter adopted from China, Tara Mulan Blum.

Father:

Robert Mark Sweeney

Mother:

Jeraldine Sweeney

Brother:

William Robert Sweeney

Brother:

Michael Ivers Sweeney

Brother:

Jim Sweeney

Sister:

Meg Sweeney

Ex-husband:

Stephen Hibbert

husband:

Michael Blum

stepdaughter:

Tara Mulan Blum

Julia Sweeney with her daughter Tara Mulan.

References

• Autobiography and Solo Performance: The Legacy of Spalding Gray Written by veteran journalist and playwright Jordan R. Young, the ultimate guide to the popular theatrical genre of one-person shows covers every aspect of the field.
  2014