Tracey Ullman

On 14 May 2019, it was announced that Ullman would be portraying Betty Friedan in the FX limited series Mrs. America. The nine-episode series premiered April 15, 2020 on Hulu to favourable reviews.

The BBC ordered a second series of the show in 2016. HBO in the United States aired the show's second series 20 October 2017. On 30 August 2018, HBO announced that Tracey Ullman's Show would return for a third season starting 28 September.

In 2017, Tracey Ullman's Show earned its first Primetime Emmy Award nomination in the category of Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. In 2018, it garnered two additional Primetime Emmy Award nominations in the categories of Outstanding Variety Sketch Series and Outstanding Costumes for a Variety, Nonfiction, or Reality Programming.

On 26 May 2017, the BBC announced that it had ordered a new topical half-hour Tracey Ullman special, Tracey Breaks the News for BBC One. The show is inspired by and aired on 23 June 2017, shortly after the 2017 United Kingdom general election. Impersonations expected are Angela Merkel, Nicola Sturgeon, as well as Ullman's first take on Prime Minister Theresa May and Melania Trump. Like Tracey Ullman's Show, it will feature a mix of famous and everyday people all reacting to the aftermath of the general election along with the anniversary of the Brexit vote. It will include the reaction of not only the UK, but Europeans and Russians. "I'm excited the BBC has asked me to make a show at this time. We've decided to shake it up with a more topical format because things move so fast these days it's like every 10 minutes I'm voting for something. There's never been a better time to be imitating world famous political women, and I admire and thank them all: Angela Merkel, Nicola Sturgeon, and my home girl newbie Theresa May. I can't wait to get stuck in - thanks to the BBC and my brilliant team. It really is a privilege." The special aired 23 June.

On 13 September 2017, the BBC announced that it had ordered a full series of Tracey Breaks the News following the success of the one-off special that aired in June. Like the one-off special, the three new shows will "tackle topical stories and current issues in a sketch show written and filmed right up to the day of broadcast". Ullman is expected to impersonate French First Lady Brigitte Macron and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn. The programme debuted on 27 October on BBC One. On 15 May 2018, it was formally announced that the show had been picked up for a second series to begin airing the following June on BBC One.

On 15 February 2017, it was announced that she would star in the Starz-BBC co-produced limited series adaptation of Howards End playing Aunt Juley Mund. The four-part series, directed by Hettie MacDonald, co-starring Hayley Atwell and Matthew Macfadyen, will be shot in and around London and is expected to air on BBC One in the United Kingdom and on the Starz network in the United States. On 14 September, it was announced that the series would begin broadcasting in November 2017 on BBC One.

In 2016, she returned to British television with the BBC sketch comedy show Tracey Ullman's Show, her first project for the broadcaster in over thirty years; this led to the creation of the topical comedy series Tracey Breaks the News in 2017.

Tracey Ullman's Show premiered 11 January 2016. Ullman became internationally famous for parodying German chancellor Angela Merkel in this show. A German media website, Meedia, described Ullman's impersonation as the best spoof of Merkel in the world.

On 15 April 2016, Ullman became the 100th guest host of Have I Got News for You.

On 4 March 2015, it was announced that Ullman would return to the BBC with a new six-part comedy series for BBC One. It was her first project for the broadcaster in thirty years, and her first original project for British television in twenty-two. The press release stated that she would play 'a multitude of diverse and distinct characters living in, or visiting, the busy global hub that is the UK.' On 7 October 2015, it was confirmed that HBO had picked up the American rights to the show, and like the BBC, would broadcast it in 2016. On 25 August 2016, HBO formally announced that it would begin airing the series on 28 October 2016.

Scouting for a supporting cast to play opposite her began. Dan Castellaneta, a relative unknown, was asked to read for the show after he was spotted by Ullman at Chicago's Second City. Castellaneta's portrayal of a blind man who wants to be a comedian brought her to tears instead of making her laugh. Actress Julie Kavner had co-starred in Brooks' spin-off series to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, starring Valerie Harper. Kavner played Harper's younger, socially awkward sister Brenda, a role for which she won an Emmy Award. Kavner was at the top of the list of people Brooks wanted to be part of the show. Brooks on Kavner: "When somebody's intrinsically funny -- you know, in-their-bones funny -- they never have to work at (being funny), so they're free to work on other things. We were all nuts about her work. She was the person we most wanted to work with Tracey." Actor Sam McMurray read for a guest spot on the show playing William, lover of thirteen-year-old valley girl Francesca's (Ullman) father. McMurray recalling his casting: "The first Francesca sketch, they said, 'Play the guy not so gay.' And I said 'I disagree.' I had a big mouth then -— still do. I said, 'I think he's more the woman. I think he's more out there.' So I read and I read it big, and they cast me. It was just a one-off, and then we were on hiatus. I did the one week, and I had a friend coincidentally who used to write, a guy named Marc Flanagan, and he was on the show as a staff guy. He called me up and said, 'Did they call your agent?' I said, 'No, why?' He said, 'They wanna make you a regular.'" Another actor who was originally cast for a guest shot which led to becoming a series regular was choreographer Joseph Malone. The show now had its cast.

In March 2014, Ullman was introduced as Genevieve Scherbatsky, the mother of character Robin Scherbatsky in How I Met Your Mother.

On 20 March 2014, it was announced that she was tapped to co-star in the upcoming CBS sitcom pilot, Good Session. The single-camera comedy was written and executive produced by Matt Miller (Chuck), along with actor James Roday (Psych) and Bruce Campbell. Ullman's character, Ellen, was described as an 'astute, straightforward therapist who uses her own brand of insight and humor to inspire the couples she helps to tell the truth.'

In 2014, she played Jack's Mother in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Into the Woods.

On 6 October 2014, it was formally announced that she would star in a limited engagement of The Band Wagon, from 6 to 16 November 2014 at City Center. The production was directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall.

In 2013, she worked with McCartney again, appearing in his music video for the single, "Queenie Eye" from his album, New.

She's just brilliant–a bloodsucker of personalities. You walk away, and she's taken a little bit of your brain.

It's been fascinating to watch Ullman evolve from, say, Imogene Coca and Carol Burnett to something leaner and meaner, like a young Whoopi Goldberg. Or Lenny Bruce, with his surreal jive and need to shock. Or Lily Tomlin, signalling in coded transmissions through a worm hole to some parallel universe. Or Anna Deavere Smith, chameleon and exorcist, seeing around corners and speaking in tongues. Or, of course, Robin Williams, before all the bad films and worse career choices, a brilliant mind unmade of equal parts politics and paranoia, music video and psychotherapy, a scrambled shaman egghead and Jack–in–a–Pandora's box. Think of America as performance art.

Ullman married producer Allan McKeown in 1983. They had two children: Mabel, born in 1986, and Johnny, born in 1991. Mabel worked as assistant to former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman; she stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in 2015, and subsequently became a charity director. Johnny is an actor and currently writes for The Late Late Show with James Corden. On 24 December 2013, Allan McKeown died at home from prostate cancer, three days before their 30th wedding anniversary. Ullman's mother died in a fire at her flat on 23 March 2015. An inquest ruled the death to be accidental. She was 85 years old. On 18 September 2018, Ullman revealed that her daughter was pregnant and that she was about to be a grandmother for the first time.

In 2012, she joined the cast of Eric Idle's What About Dick?, described as a 1940s-style stand-up improv musical comedy radio play, taking on three roles. The show played for four nights in April in Los Angeles at the Orpheum Theater. She had performed the piece previously in a test run for Idle back in 2007. Cast members included Idle, Eddie Izzard, Billy Connolly, Russell Brand, Tim Curry, Jane Leeves, Jim Piddock, and Sophie Winkleman.

In 2011, she returned to the British stage in the Stephen Poliakoff drama My City. Her performance earned her an Evening Standard Theatre Awards nomination for Best Actress.

The show ran for three seasons, concluding in 2010.

In April 2009, it was announced that Ullman would be awarded a Lifetime Achievement BAFTA Award the following May. She became the first recipient of the Charlie Chaplin Lifetime Achievement Award for Comedy on 9 May 2009.

Tracey Ullman's State of the Union debuted on 30 March 2008. The show not only featured original characters, but also celebrity impersonations, something she hadn't done since Three of a Kind.

Upon her naturalisation in the United States, it was announced in April 2007 that she would be making the switch from her 14-year working relationship with cable network HBO to Showtime. Ullman created a brand new series for the network which was concerned with many aspects of American life: "The good, the bad, and the absolutely ridiculous."

Her voice work in film includes Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and the computer-animated The Tale of Despereaux. She acted as creative consultant on the 2006 DreamWorks feature, Flushed Away.

Ullman became an American citizen in December 2006 and holds dual citizenship in the United States and the United Kingdom. The results of the 2004 United States presidential election, and a comment made by actor Tom Hanks, prompted her desire to naturalise. "Tom Hanks was standing in a corridor at a party and I said something, and he was just very nice and he went, 'Oh, yeah. I know that but you're British. You know, you don't have to put up with that stuff ... I went, 'No. Actually I've been here a long time.' I thought, that's it. I'm going to join in. So I took the [citizenship] test".

In 2006, she topped the list for the "Wealthiest British Comedians", with an estimated wealth of £75 million. In 2015, Ullman's wealth was estimated to be £77 million, making her the wealthiest British actress and female comedian. In 2017, The Sunday Times increased it to £80 million.

An avid knitter, she co-wrote a knitting book, Knit 2 Together: Patterns and Stories for Serious Knitting Fun in 2006.

On 5 December 2006, she was honoured at the Museum of Television and Radio along with the likes of Carol Burnett, Lesley Visser, Lesley Stahl, Jane Pauley, and Betty White, in the "She Made It" category.

She returned to the network again in 2005 with a filmed version of her live autobiographical one-woman stage show, Tracey Ullman: Live and Exposed.

In 2005, she co-starred with Carol Burnett in the television adaptation of Once Upon a Mattress. She played Princess Winnifred, a role originally made famous by Burnett on Broadway. This time Burnett took on the role of the overbearing Queen Aggravain.

In February 2005, she performed her autobiographical one-woman show Tracey Ullman: Live and Exposed at The Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles, where it ran for ten performances.

A pilot for a Tracey Takes On... spin-off, Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales, was produced in 2003 for HBO. The show spotlighted just one character, Ruby Romaine. Ullman made her directorial debut with the show. No series was commissioned and the episode aired as a one-off comedy special.

In 2001, Ullman took a break from her character-based work and created a fashion-based talk show for Oxygen Network, Tracey Ullman's Visible Panty Lines. The series was spun off from her e-commerce clothing store Purple Skirt, which had been launched a few years prior. Interviewees included Arianna Huffington and Charlize Theron. The show lasted for two seasons and ended in 2002.

Ullman and the show went on to receive a slew of awards including six Emmy Awards, two CableAce Awards, three American Comedy Awards, two GLAAD Media Awards, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award in 1999 for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series.

In 1995, she became the first modern-day cartoon voice of Little Lulu. In 1999, she had a recurring role as an unconventional psychotherapist on Ally McBeal. Her performance garnered her an Emmy Award and an American Comedy Award.

Ullman was under serious consideration for a number of roles: Betty Rubble in 1994's The Flintstones; Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games. Director Adrian Lyne asked her to screen test for his film Fatal Attraction. She passed on the idea and the role went to Glenn Close. She was also sought for reuniting with her Plenty co-star Meryl Streep in She-Devil. The part ultimately went to comedian Roseanne Barr.

Unlike the Fox show though, this special would be shot entirely on location, allowing ample time to apply makeup, wigs, and other accoutrements for the characters; so Ullman felt less panicked. She decided to do a send up of the British class system. All new characters were created and she was joined by Monty Python's Michael Palin for each of the show's sketches. Tracey Ullman: A Class Act premiered on 9 January 1993 on ITV.

The special, Tracey Ullman Takes on New York debuted on 9 October 1993 and both it and Ullman went on to win two Emmy Awards, a CableAce Award, an American Comedy Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award. The success of the special led the network to broach the subject of a "Takes On" series. Ullman and her husband liked the idea and set up production on Tracey Takes On... in Los Angeles in 1995.

Ullman provided the voices of Emily Winthrop, a British dog trainer, and Mrs. Winfield on The Simpsons episode "Bart's Dog Gets an F" (1991).

By the time The Tracey Ullman Show ended in 1990, the show was awarded ten Emmy Awards; Ullman winning three, one in the category of Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program in 1990. The show not only scored the Fox network its first Emmy nomination, but also earned it its first-ever Emmy win.

After four seasons, Ullman decided to end the show in May 1990. In 1991, she filed a lawsuit against Twentieth Century Fox in Los Angeles Superior Court over profits from the later half-hour incarnation of The Simpsons. She wanted a share of The Simpsons' merchandising and gross profits and believed she was entitled to $2.5 million of the estimated $50 million Fox made in 1992. The Fox network had paid her $58,000 in royalties for The Simpsons as well as $3 million for the 3½ seasons her show was on the air. According to an article, as Ullman had continued her professional relationship with former producer Brooks, only the studio and not Brooks was named in the suit. Brooks was allowed to videotape his testimony as he was in the middle of filming I'll Do Anything, in which Ullman appeared. The suit was ultimately dismissed. Ullman wasn't the only one to file a lawsuit; Tracey Ullman Show executive producer Ken Estin filed a similar suit against Fox claiming that his contract called for him to receive 7.5% of revenues from The Simpsons, including a portion of merchandise. Despite losing the 1992 suit, Ullman continues to get an annual share of the show's profits.

After The Tracey Ullman Show, Ullman went on to make her big screen starring debut with I Love You To Death in 1990. That same year she hit the stage with actor Morgan Freeman for Shakespeare in the Park's production of The Taming of the Shrew; she then made her Broadway debut with her one-woman show, The Big Love. She had no aspirations to return to the television. In 1991, she had given birth to her second child, Johnny, and her husband was bidding on a television franchise in the South of England. Along with the bid he included a potential television programming lineup. Listed was a Tracey Ullman special. Ullman thought nothing would come of it, but to her horror, she learnt that the bid was successful.

She made her big screen leading role debut in 1990's I Love You to Death acting alongside Kevin Kline, River Phoenix and Joan Plowright. She subsequently appeared in lead and supporting roles in films such as Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Nancy Savoca's Household Saints, Bullets over Broadway, Small Time Crooks and A Dirty Shame. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category of Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for her work in Small Time Crooks in 2001.

In 1990, she starred opposite actor Morgan Freeman as Kate in Shakespeare in the Park's production of Taming of the Shrew set in the Wild West for Joe Papp. In 1991, she made her Broadway debut with Jay Presson Allen's one-woman show The Big Love, based on the book of the same name. The Big Love recounts an alleged love affair between actor Errol Flynn and a then fifteen-year-old actress Beverly Aadland, as told by her mother, Florence Aadland (Ullman). Both Taming of the Shrew and The Big Love garnered her Theatre World Awards.

She emigrated from England to the United States where she starred in her own network television comedy series, The Tracey Ullman Show, from 1987 until 1990, which also featured the first appearances of the long-running animated media franchise, The Simpsons. She later produced programmes for HBO, including Tracey Takes On... (1996–99), for which she garnered numerous awards. Her sketch comedy series, Tracey Ullman's State of the Union, ran from 2008 to 2010 on Showtime. She has also appeared in several feature films. Ullman was the first British woman to be offered her own television sketch show in both the United Kingdom and the United States.

Because the Fox network was new to the world of television production, a bureaucracy had not yet been established. This enabled the show to take risks and the freedom to try things that the major networks would never permit. The series landed an initial twenty-six episode commitment deal, unheard of for a television comedy. The Tracey Ullman Show debuted on 5 April 1987. Describing the show proved difficult. Creator Ken Estin dubbed it a "skitcom". A variety of diverse original characters were created for her to perform. Extensive makeup, wigs, teeth, and body padding were utilised, sometimes rendering her unrecognisable. One original character created by Ullman back in Britain was uprooted for the series: long-suffering British spinster Kay Clark.

In 1987, Ullman filmed a sketch for Saturday Night Live, "Hollywood Mom." In it, she plays an English actress who focuses more on her career than on her newborn daughter.

In 1985, Ullman was persuaded by her husband to join him in Los Angeles, where he was already partially based. She was no stranger to the United States, as she had promoted her music career there, appearing and performing on an array of American talk shows. She had also just completed a press junket for her film, the period drama, Plenty there. The US knew her as a singer and a now budding serious film actress; not the television comedian of her homeland. When she agreed to make the move to the America, she had set her sights on a film and stage career, believing that there was little in the way of television for her. "I didn't believe there was anything above Webster standard. I was wrong."

Her final hit, "Sunglasses" (1984), featured comedian Adrian Edmondson in its music video. During this time, she also appeared as a guest VJ on MTV in the United States.

In an interview with Amanda Root for The Musical Express magazine, Ullman was asked about critics labeling the show 'non-sexist humour.' Did it exist? "Not unless it's cleverly done. When we did Three of a Kind we kept getting sketches sent in about me as a traffic warden, or me being a busty barmaid. Writers that have no idea about women - their typical way of starting a sketch is to say, Tracey is sitting there, filing her nails and chewing gum, as if all girls are stupid. Sketches beginning like that used to really get on my nerves. But as soon as we found the right team of writers, they weren't into that sort of thing, so it worked out OK." She went on to win her first BAFTA Award in the category of Best Light Entertainment Performance for Three of a Kind in 1984.

In April 1984, it was announced that Five Faces of Tracey, described as an 'all film series of five half hours' starring Ullman as one character per episode in one 'self-contained story,' was to be filmed in July of that year written by Ruby Wax and herself. The series never came to fruition.

Along with her television work, Ullman has featured in many films throughout her career. Her first theatrical film was a small role in Paul McCartney's 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street. This was followed by a supporting role in the 1985 Meryl Streep drama Plenty. She re-teamed with Streep for 1992's Death Becomes Her, playing Toni, a bartender who runs away with Ernest (Bruce Willis) and lives happily ever after. Director Robert Zemeckis decided to re-shoot the ending, opting for a darker, "more risky ending." This meant that Ullman's scenes would have to be cut. "We were all heartbroken over losing the character. (She) was so great." Despite the cut, some of her scenes were released in an early trailer for the film. Death Becomes Her is one of two instances in which her scenes in a film have ended up on the cutting room floor. Due to time constraints, her song in 1996's Everyone Says I Love You was deleted.

When she hastily married Allan McKeown in 1983, it made front-page news all over the country, with the press placing bets on how long the marriage would last; it lasted nearly thirty years, until McKeown's death in 2013.

Her 1983 debut album, You Broke My Heart in 17 Places, featured her first hit single, "Breakaway" (famous for her performance with a hairbrush as a microphone), and the international hit cover version of label-mate Kirsty MacColl's "They Don't Know," which reached #2 in the UK, #35 in Germany and #8 in the United States. MacColl sang backing vocals on Ullman's version. In less than two years, Ullman had six songs in the UK Top 100.

In 1983, she signed on to star in a comedy about four women sharing a flat together, Girls on Top (provisionally titled Four-Play, Bitches on Heat, and Four Fs to Share). She was cast as the promiscuous golddigger Candice Valentine. The show didn't go into production until early 1985 due to an electricians' strike at the studio where the series was set to film. The show, co-starring comedians Dawn French, Ruby Wax and Jennifer Saunders (who also wrote the scripts), continued after Ullman bowed out after the first series. In her book, Bonkers: My Life in Laughs, Saunders writes, "If Ruby taught us how to write funny, then Tracey was a lesson in how to act funny. She was by far the most famous of us, having starred with Lenny Henry in 'Three of a Kind.'”

In 1983, she took part in the workshops for Andrew Lloyd Webber's upcoming musical, Starlight Express, playing the part of Pearl and Snoo Wilson's The Grass Widow at the Royal Court Theatre with actor Alan Rickman.

In 1982, she met her future husband, Allan McKeown, a television producer with his own production company, Witzend Productions. McKeown discovered her when he happened to catch her in an episode of Three of a Kind. The two eventually worked together on a television pilot for Central Television, A Cut Above, about a 1960s hairdresser (McKeown's former profession) who meets a posh girl (Ullman). "Pilot didn't work, but I got a husband out of it," said Ullman in 1990.

In 1982, she played Kate Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer.

In 1981, the success of her performance in the Royal Court Theatre's production of Four in a Million led to many offers; one being the chance to move into television comedy. The BBC was quick to cast her in the BBC Scotland sketch comedy programme A Kick Up the Eighties. The network was so impressed with her that it offered her her own series. She initially turned down the offer. "My first reaction was you must be joking, as women are treated so shoddily in comedy. Big busty barmaids and all those sort of cliches just bore me rigid." She also had reservations due to a lack of female contemporaries. "At that time English women weren't really allowed to be funny on television. I didn't have any examples. I mean, I didn't have a Gilda Radner, Carol Burnett, Lily Tomlin. I mean, my only point of reference, quite honestly, was the Benny Hill girls." Ullman got into her performing arts school by doing an impersonation of Lily Tomlin. Eventually a deal was made with the proviso that she would get to choose the show's writers, have script approval, and choose the costumes. Three of a Kind, co-starring comedians Lenny Henry and David Copperfield, debuted in 1981.

Her award-winning performance in Les Blair's avant-garde Four in a Million in 1981 led to a career in television.

She tried her hand at serious drama, playing Lynda Bellingham's daughter in the 1980 BBC TV series Mackenzie, but said that she found that she wasn't cut out to be a straight actress. "I really thought I was great when I did a quite serious soap opera for the BBC. I played a nice girl from St. John's Wood. 'Mummy, I think I'm pregnant. I don't know who's done it.' Then I would fall down a hill or something. 'EEEEE! Oh, no, lost another baby.' It seemed all I ever did was have miscarriages—or make yogurt."

In 1980, she appeared in Victoria Wood's Talent at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool.

To ensure that she was well-versed in American comedy, Brooks sent her tapes of American sitcoms and variety shows to watch while at home, now pregnant. Ullman refers to it as "homework." She also visited the Museum of Television and Radio, which she would later be inducted into. She had in fact grown up watching American television in the 1970s in England. Two things stood out to her: the vast number of female comedians, as well as their not having to be conventionally attractive to be funny. "It was very true of my childhood that women needed to be sexy in order to be funny."

Ullman has an extensive stage career spanning back to the 1970s.

Ullman's songs were over-the-top evocations of 1960s and 1970s pop music with a 1980s edge, "somewhere between Minnie Mouse and the Supremes" as the Melody Maker put it, or "retro before retro was cool," as a reviewer wrote in 2002. Her career received another boost when the video for "They Don't Know" featured a cameo from Paul McCartney; at the time Ullman was filming a minor role in McCartney's film Give My Regards to Broad Street. She released her second (and final) album, You Caught Me Out, in 1984.

Tracey Ullman (born 30 December 1959) is a British-American actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, author, and businesswoman.

Antony Ullman served in the Polish Army and was evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940. He subsequently worked as a solicitor, a furniture salesman, and a travel agent. He also brokered marriages and translated among the émigré Polish community. Dorin and Antony recognized their younger daughter's talents early on and encouraged her to perform.