"Samantha Who?" has emerged as one of the breakout hits of this troubled TV season, and a major component of the ABC sitcom's success is Melissa McCarthy's hilarious work as Dena, a childhood friend of Christina Applegate's title character.
"Dena is so sweet and bubbly, but at the same time there was that scene in the pilot where she confessed that she and Sam were not really friends and she had been fooling everyone," McCarthy says. "That made her much more interesting to me. She just wanted to be friends with these girls so desperately that she went outside her normal behavior. But if she's crazy enough to do that, what else might she do? Dena is just a little 'off,' which is always more interesting than someone who is just straight up."
McCarthy broke into comedy at New York clubs, then made her TV debut on her cousin Jenny McCarthy's 1997 MTV comedy-variety show.
Her big break came in 2000 as sweet-natured chef Sookie St. James on "Gilmore Girls," a show that required her to master huge chunks of dialogue.
"It was never not in my mind that I couldn't really complain about what I had to do when Lauren (Graham) had, like, 700 pages a week," McCarthy recalls. "She has close to a photographic memory, and I don't know if they ever realized that, if she hadn't had that memory, (the show) would have been literally impossible."
Off-camera, she's raising infant daughter Vivian without a nanny. "My husband is an actor, too, and between our two schedules, we're able to do it ourselves 95 percent of the time. And to me, that means everything," she says.
Born: Aug. 26, 1970, in Plainfield, Ill.
Family ties: Married to actor Ben Falcone ("Joey") since 2005; one daughter, Vivian. Melissa also is a cousin of Jenny McCarthy.
Professional training: Studied with The Actors Studio in New York; she also is a member of The Groundlings Main Company, a world-famous improvisational comedy and sketch troupe.
Film credits: "Go," "Drowning Mona," "Auto Motives," "The Kid," "Charlie's Angels," "Pumpkin," "White Oleander," "The Life of David Gale," "Cook-Off!" and "The Nines."