Baranski was born in Buffalo, New York, the daughter of Virginia (née Mazurowska) and Lucien Baranski, who edited a Polish-language newspaper.[2] She had an older brother, Michael J. Baranski (1949–1998), an advertising executive who died at age 48.[3] She is of Polish descent, and her grandparents were stage actors in Poland before emigrating to America.[4][5] Baranski was raised in a heavily Polish and Catholic neighborhood in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga. She attended high school at the Villa Maria Academy where she was class president and salutatorian.[6][7][8] She studied at New York City's Juilliard School[9] (Drama Division Group 3: 1970–1974),[10] where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.[11]
At the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Baranski starred as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd in 2002 (for which she won the 2003 Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical) and as the title character in Mame in 2006.[12][8] In her first Broadway production since 1991, Baranski was featured as the maid Berthe in the 2008 revival of Boeing Boeing.[13] The show garnered two Tony Awards, one for Best Revival of a Play and the other for Best Actor (Mark Rylance). The original cast was Bradley Whitford (Bernard), Kathryn Hahn (Gloria), Christine Baranski (Berthe), Gina Gershon (Gabriella), and Mary McCormack (Gretchen). The show closed on January 4, 2009.
Baranski appeared in short-term roles on various daytime soap operas, including All My Children and Another World. Baranski was featured as Cybill Shepherd's sarcastic, hard-drinking friend Maryann Thorpe in the CBSsitcomCybill, which ran from 1995 until 1998, during which time she hosted Saturday Night Live and won an Emmy Award as Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series along with three other nominations. During this, Baranski portrayed a librarian named Sonja Umdahl in the "Dick and the Single Girl" episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun.[17] A few years later, Baranski received an Emmy nomination for a guest starring role in the NBC seriesFrasier as a controversial tough love radio psychiatrist named Dr. Nora. The episode, which was named for the character, parodied Dr. Laura Schlessinger.[18][19] The episode was pulled from syndication by Paramount.[19] Baranski had an uncredited role in the series Now and Again as the voice of Roger's overbearing wife Ruth, who was never seen by viewers.
Baranski later appeared in the 2000–2001 sitcom Welcome to New York and, with John Laroquette, in the 2003–2004 NBC sitcom Happy Family. She co-starred with Bernadette Peters in a pilot for an ABC sitcom, Adopted, in 2005, which was not picked up. She also played Faith Clancy, the mother of Jim Clancy in Ghost Whisperer. In 2009, Baranski began guest-starring in The Big Bang Theory as Dr. Beverly Hofstadter, a dispassionate psychiatrist and neuroscientist and mother of one of the protagonists, Leonard Hofstadter. She first appeared in the second-season episode "The Maternal Capacitance", for which she received an Emmy nomination. Due to the popularity of her first appearance, Baranski returned in the third season for the Christmas episode "The Maternal Congruence", receiving another Emmy nomination. She appeared in a total of 16 episodes during the show's run, earning four Emmy nominations for her recurring role.[20][21]
From 2009 to 2016, Baranski played the role of Diane Lockhart, a top litigator and senior partner of a Chicago law firm on the CBS series The Good Wife. She was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for six seasons of the series, in the years 2010 to 2015. Besides her work on The Good Wife and the aforementioned guest appearances on The Big Bang Theory, her other recent appearances include Ugly Betty in 2009 as Victoria Hartley, the haughty mother of Betty's new boyfriend.[22][23]
Although recognized for her versatility across genres and performing media, Baranski is particularly known for playing sophisticated and highly educated upper-class women.[25] Consequently, the media began alluding to the resemblance between this repeated on-screen persona and Baranski's real personality.[26][27][28] Caroline Hallemann of Town & Country notes that, "For years, the award-winning actress has been the definition of on-screen sophistication."[29] In 2017, the actress told Zac Posen for Interview Magazine, "What I'm getting at is if your career is not predicated on just your physical beauty, you're able to project a sophistication. You can take sophisticated to your grave. You can be that worldly woman, that woman who looks beautiful dressed up."[30] On the other hand, Baranski humorously addressed these claims during her appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, "Everybody thinks this is, you know, this sophisticated lady, this New York type, these characters that I play, they think that's me. They should be in a room alone with me when I watch the Buffalo Bills. It is loud."[31]
Personal life
Baranski was married to actor Matthew Cowles from October 1983 until his death on May 22, 2014.[32] Together, they had two daughters, Isabel (b. 1984), a lawyer, and Lily (b. 1987), an actress.[33][34] She lives in Connecticut. A devout Catholic, Baranski often attends Mass with Robert King, co-creator of The Good Fight.[35]
^Hallemann, Caroline (January 24, 2022). "The Age of Christine Baranski". Town & Country. Archived from the original on April 15, 2022. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
^Posen, Zac (January 30, 2017). "Christine Baranski". Interview Magazine. Archived from the original on January 18, 2022. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
^Stephen Colbert (host) (April 28, 2016). "Christine Baranski". The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Season 1. Episode 131. CBS. Archived from the original on October 11, 2016. Retrieved May 1, 2016.
