Lisa Ann Walter is an American actress, comedian, writer and film producer.
Background
Walter was born and raised in suburban Silver Spring, Maryland, near Washington, District of Columbia, where she remembers "always liking to show off" as a child. Her mother was of Italian descent and her father was from a family from Alsace, and had German ancestry. Her mother was a teacher, later working at the local courthouse.
Education
She attended Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, Maryland, finally studying drama at the Catholic University of America under the tutelage of the renowned Father Gilbert Hartke.
Career
She has appeared in such films as the 1998 version of The Parent Trap, Bruce Almighty, Shall We Dance, and War of the Worlds. Walter also created and starred in the short-lived 1996–1997 sitcom, Life"s Work. She was a judge on American Broadcasting Company"s reality television series The Next Best Thing: Who Is the Greatest Celebrity Impersonator?.
Walter"s father worked at National Aeronautics and Space Administration and indulged his own love of performing after-hours in local community theater.
Her parents, both native New Yorkers, divorced when Walter was in elementary school. She began appearing in various regional and dinner theater productions, and met her future spouse, Sam Baum, while performing in "A Streetcar Named Desire".
Walter performed at amateur night contests at some of the noted comedy clubs. After five years of standup comedy, she was cast to star in her own Fox Network comedy series, My Wildest Dreams, followed by an American Broadcasting Company sitcom, Life"s Work, which she both created and starred in.
Walter also co-starred in the Bravo series Breaking News and in the National Broadcasting Company sitcom Emeril.
In addition to Bruce Almighty (2003) and Shall We Dance (2004), Walter co-starred in the Disney film The Parent Trap (1998). In the remake of the original classic, she appeared as the nanny to Dennis Quaid"s character"s daughter, who was played by a young Lindsay Lohan. Prior to that, she played Whoopi Goldberg"s tarty sidekick Claudine in Eddie (1996).
In early 2007, Walter had a supporting role as Mabel the bartender in the MyNetworkTV soap opera Watch Over Maine.
That summer, she served as a judge on the American Broadcasting Company reality television show The Next Best Thing, which searched for the best celebrity impersonators in America. In the Spring of 2008, she was in the comedy film Drillbit Taylor, and also starred on the Video Hits One reality series Celebracadabra, in which celebrities competed to see who was the best magician among them.
She made it to the final three but was eliminated in the sixth episode. She has developed a series for the Oxygen network called Dance Your Ass Office.
On December 19, 2011, she appeared on "Rizzoli & Isles" as a dance and ballet coach, Josip Juraj lieutenant was far from her usual role, as she played a very serious character in a drama.
Her comic memoir, "The Best Thing About My Ass Is That lieutenant"s Behind Maine" was published in May 2011. Beginning in May 2011, Walter hosted a talk show on Los Angeles radio station KFI. Known as "The Fabulous Lisa Ann Walter Show," the program aired for three hours each Saturday and Sunday. In August 2014, Walter quit in order to focus on her acting career.