Cheryl Hines - Career

Career

Before getting her break in Hollywood, Hines worked as a waitress, television reporter, and telephone operator, as well as as a personal assistant to Rob Reiner, when she moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Though Reiner did not play a critical role in her career, he would watch her shows when she began acting. She would guest appear on TV shows such as Swamp Thing and Unsolved Mysteries.

Hines began her acting career by doing improvisational comedy at The Groundlings Theater. Among the people she studied with was Lisa Kudrow. She also learned to write comedy sketches, which served her well when working on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm as Larry David's fictional wife, Cheryl. The show is written using the retroscripting technique, in which the plot outlines are generally and loosely drawn, and the individual actors improvise to create the dialogue.

"When the show first came out, people from Tallahassee thought, 'Well, maybe Cheryl got married'", she recalls of the show's initial reception. "Sometimes, I do feel like I live two lives." Hines received Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2003 and 2006. Speaking about being cast on the show, Hines has said that "Until Curb, I’d done small roles, really small roles. They wanted to cast an unknown actress. It worked in my favor that I hadn’t done anything. It changed my life."

In movies, she was one of the stars of RV opposite Robin Williams, Waitress with Keri Russell, and the 2008 mockumentary comedy The Grand, a spoof of the World Series of Poker. Her 2009 directorial debut Serious Moonlight stars Meg Ryan with a script by the late Adrienne Shelly, Hines's co-star in Waitress.

During the 2009-2010 season of Brothers and Sisters, she guest-starred as Kitty Walker McCallister's campaign manager, Buffy.

It was announced in July 2010 that Hines would be joining the cast of the new Nickelodeon film based on their series The Fairly Oddparents, A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up Timmy Turner!. She served as Wanda, the main character's (Timmy's) godmother. (She plays live-action scenes while Susan Blakeslee voices CGI scenes).

Hines serves as the executive producer for the 2010 reality series School Pride, which follows the renovation of a different school each week.

Hines is currently starring as Dallas Royce on the ABC sitcom Suburgatory.