Julia Sweeney

Sweeney appeared at the 2019 CSICon put on by the Center for Inquiry (CFI) where she presented about half of the monologue for the conference attendees.

In 2013 Sweeney voiced Sheri Squibbles in the Pixar animated film Monsters University.

In 2009 and 2010, Sweeney performed with singer/songwriter Jill Sobule in a revue called Jill and Julia. Sweeney and Sobule originally met at a Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) conference and performed together at TED in 2008. They brought the show on the road in 2009 and 2010, performing in New York, Denver and other locations. The show is an autobiographical mix of music, stories and commentary.

From 2009 to 2010, Sweeney was part of the regular rotation of panelists for the NPR news quiz radio show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, in downtown Chicago.

She worked the show in small theaters and clubs around Los Angeles for three years and then opened it at the Hudson Backstage Theater in October 2004. An audio recording of Letting Go of God was released on CD in 2006, and it was filmed live on stage in May 2007. The film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on June 13, 2008. The DVD of the show was released in November 2008.

In 2004, Sweeney co-starred in two episodes of Frasier as Frasier's blind date turned litigious unwanted houseguest, Ann Hodges.

Sweeney's second monologue chronicled the adoption of her daughter from China. In the Family Way started on stage in New York City in early 2003 at the Ars Nova Theatre. The show was directed by the Broadway stage director, Mark Brokaw. The show then migrated to the Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles. Sweeney has also released a CD recording of In the Family Way, and in 2006 she performed a 25-minute excerpt of this show at the Hollywood Bowl with a new orchestration written especially for her piece by the composer Anthony Marinelli and performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In 2000, she provided the voice of Wanda MacPherson in the short-lived The WB/Adult Swim animated sitcom Baby Blues .

Sweeney is married to scientist Michael Blum. They and their adopted daughter from China, Tara Mulan Blum (born 2000), have lived in the Chicago suburbs since 2009.

In a segment for This American Life in 1999, Sweeney describes one of her first jobs, as a bartender's assistant, how she began embezzling funds from her employer, and the consequences thereof.

God Said Ha! moved to Broadway, winning the 1996 New York Comedy Festival's Audience Award, and a CD recording of the show earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album that same year. Miramax released a film version of the show in 1998, directed by Sweeney and produced by Quentin Tarantino. The film earned the Golden Space Needle Award at the Seattle Film Festival. It was released on DVD in 2003. Portions of the monologues from Un-Cabaret were featured on This American Life (then known as Your Radio Playhouse) in January 1996 in episode 9. Since her initial monologue, she has appeared on three more This American Life episodes.

After leaving the cast of Saturday Night Live, Sweeney returned to Los Angeles where, shortly afterwards, her career was put on hold by a series of personal traumas. Her brother Michael was diagnosed with lymphoma, and shortly thereafter Sweeney discovered that she too had cancer. Her brother did not survive the cancer. Throughout the ordeal, Sweeney told stories of her experiences in serio-comic performances at L.A.'s alternative comedy club, the Un-Cabaret, eventually developing the stories into a one-woman stage show, God Said Ha!, which debuted at San Francisco's Magic Theater in 1995.

In 1994, she had a small role as "Raquel" in the movie Pulp Fiction.

Sweeney's 1993 impression of US President Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea caused a stir when First Lady Hillary Clinton found it offensive and sent an angry letter to the show.

In 1992, she also worked with the rock band Ugly Kid Joe, performing in the music video for their hit "Neighbor" and contributing introductory audio to two tracks, "Goddamn Devil" and "Everything About You". The latter was on the soundtrack to the Lorne Michaels movie Wayne's World.

At a Groundlings performance in 1989, Saturday Night Live (SNL) producer Lorne Michaels discovered Sweeney and offered her a spot as one of SNL's featured players. She joined the regular SNL cast the following year and remained with the show through four seasons, from 1990 to 1994. One of her most memorable and popular characters was Pat, whose indeterminate gender confused other characters who would try to determine it. (Sweeney would play the character in a feature film, It's Pat, for which she was one of the writers.)

In 1988, while still working as an accountant, Sweeney enrolled in classes with the improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings, eventually being selected to be part of the troupe's Sunday Company. It was at The Groundlings that she began to develop characters, which she would later bring to the stage, film, and television. They include Mea Culpa, the title character of Mea's Big Apology (co-written by then-husband Stephen Hibbert), which won the Best Written Play Award from L.A. Weekly in 1988 and has been developed by Sweeney (in collaboration with Jim Emerson) into a screenplay; and the androgynous Pat, whose impossible-to-determine gender was the basis for Sweeney's popular It's Pat! skits on Saturday Night Live, and later for her feature film of the same name, which was pulled from theaters after one week due to its immensely negative reception.

Julia Anne Sweeney (born October 10, 1959) is an American actress, comedian and author. She was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1994. She played Mrs. Keeper in the film Stuart Little and voiced Brittany in Father of the Pride. She currently co-stars in the Hulu series Shrill and the Showtime series Work in Progress.