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Jane Lynch could have had a perfectly serviceable career as Hey! It's That Straight-Talking Nurse, Doctor, Or (For Some Reason) Reporter!. She'd been playing a health-care professional or journalist in movies and TV shows like The Fugitive, Fatal Instinct, Party Of Five, and Red Lipstick. Maybe it wasn't so interesting or fulfilling, but Lord knows character actors can do a lot worse. But fortunately for Lynch, she somehow came to the attention of Christopher Guest, who saw that there was more to her than catheters and press cards. Guest cast Lynch in Best In Show as Christy Cummings -- a statuesque dog trainer with a surprising number of polar fleece vests, an affinity for one remarkable standard poodle, and a secret. By the end of the film...well, to say a comedy legend had been born would be overstating things just a smidge. But she had turned in her first of many pretty awesome comic performances.

The change didn't happen overnight -- post-Show, Lynch still played a nurse on Gilmore Girls and MDs, a doctor on The King Of Queens, a reporter on The West Wing, and other assorted H!ITG! roles, like a lawyer on Judging Amy and Pacey's mom on Dawson's Creek. But Lynch did start edging into comedic roles, even if it had to be in alleged comedies like Family Guy, Titus, According To Jim, Arli$$, and Two And A Half Men. (Maybe it helped Lynch to sharpen her comic timing to act opposite Jim Belushi or Jon Cryer -- you know, like how it can help you to build up your muscles by punching a solid but unresponsive heavy bag?) Regardless, Lynch showed up again in Guest's next film, A Mighty Wind, as a folk singer with a devoted husband (John Michael Higgins) with a worshipful attitude toward colour, and a secret. Last year, Lynch showed up in The 40 Year-Old Virgin as a home electronics store manager with a choppy blonde haircut, a casual attitude toward her generally disrespectful employees, and...well, you know. Because maybe the awesomest thing about Lynch is the way she can project this totally average, chipper, middle-American normalcy, only to have a moment, in each of her best performances, when we see that persona is just a thin veneer concealing the fact that, secretly, she is a super-freak! Super-freak!

Is she the kind of super-freak you don't take home to Mama, you ask? Well, sometimes. In A Mighty Wind, Lynch's secret is that she used to be a porn star. In Virgin, once she learns that Andy (Steve Carell) has yet to be deflowered, she not only promises that she'll "haunt [his] dreams," but tells him about her own youthful sexual awakening with a friendly Guatemalan. And in the current Lovespring International...well, there are some people you don't necessarily want to have any hand in your dating life, and maybe her Lena is one of them.

We must also commend Lynch for the refreshing matter-of-factness with which she plays lady-loving ladies. She's played legendary lesbian Amelia Earhart in The Aviator (though her scenes were deleted) and had a recurring role on The L Word (though we confess we don't know whether she plays a lesbian on it -- we shall have no truck with any show that deigns to encourage fanfic). And the scene in Best In Show in which Christy and Sherri Ann (Jennifer Coolidge) finally consummate their relationship at the dog show -- well, it makes that dog show climactic in more ways than one.