· Image Search

In 1995, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner -- the TV production powerhouse team that brought the world The Cosby Show and Roseanne -- thought it would be a good idea to rip off the popular British series Absolutely Fabulous. In the "Edina" role, they cast the bosomy, hysterical Cybill Shepherd -- a poor translation, to make a charitable assessment. But in casting the "Patsy" role, they managed to improve on the original, beaming the formidable Christine Baranski in American homes every week. Cybill was a justly short-lived, crappy series, having unfortunately been pinned on the singularly unlikable Shepherd, but Baranski's Maryann consistently rose above the tired material she was given, and she managed to make her booze-swilling divorcée the show's most perversely appealing character.

Baranski began her career at the tender age of twenty-eight, and since then has appeared in twenty movies, including Bowfinger, which opens this week. Despite her humble beginnings in the unglamorous city of Buffalo, with her regal bearing and haughty, imperial nose, Baranski embodies the screen archetype of the upper-class ice queen -- a role she has memorably played in such films as Reversal of Fortune, Addams Family Values, The Ref, The Birdcage, and Cruel Intentions. These days, Baranski is getting a run for her HITG! money from Allison Janney, but Janney is more of a chameleon; Baranski has staked her claim on the rich bitch, and no one does it better than she.