Allison Janney was born November 19, 1959 and is an American actress.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in two cities in Ohio, Janney won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the summer of 1984, following her graduation from Kenyon College. After years of minor and uncredited film and television appearances, Janney’s breakthrough came with the role of C. J. Cregg in the NBC political drama The West Wing (1999–2006). The character was widely popular during the airing of the series and was later recognized as one of the greatest female characters on American television. Since 2013, she has starred as a cynical recovering addict in the CBS sitcom Mom.
Janney made her professional stage debut with the Off-Broadway production Ladies and followed with numerous bit parts in various similar productions, before making her Broadway debut in the 1996 revival of Present Laughter.
Her film roles include Private Parts (1997), Primary Colors (1998), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), American Beauty (1999), The Hours (2002), Hairspray (2007), Juno (2007), The Help (2011), The Way, Way Back (2013), Tammy (2014), Spy (2015), Tallulah (2016), and The Girl on the Train (2016), I, Tonya (2017), and Bad Education (2019). She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in I, Tonya.
She is the daughter of Macy Brooks Janney (née Putnam), and Jervis Spencer Janney, Jr., a real estate developer and jazz musician.She has two brothers, Hal and Jay. Janney attended the Miami Valley School in Dayton, where she was named a distinguished alumna in 2005, and the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where she was named Alumna of the Year in 2016. She then attended Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. At Kenyon, she studied with Paul Newman, an alumnus of Kenyon. He directed her in a play as the inaugural event of the school’s newly dedicated Bolton Theater. Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodward, encouraged Janney to continue acting. She then went on to train at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York and did summer programs at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She attended The Neighborhood Playhouse the same years as actor Dylan McDermott. She completed two years at the Neighborhood Playhouse along with Steven Rogers.
Janney’s first role on television was in the short-lived black-and-white faux-1940s comedy Morton & Hayes; she appeared in two episodes of the 1991 CBS series as Eddie Hayes’ wife. She then moved on to soap operas; she first played Vi Kaminski for a short time on As the World Turns, following up with a two-year role as Ginger, one of the Spaulding maids, on Guiding Light. In the spring of 1994, she appeared in the season-four finale of Law & Order, entitled “Old Friends”, as a reluctant witness against a member of the Russian mob. She was also a cast member on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion.
Janney has remained active in theater. In 2017, Janney returned to Broadway to play the leading role of Ouisa Kittredge in John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation.
In 2004, she began lending her voice to television and radio spots created by Kaiser Permanente in the health maintenance organization’s broad “Thrive” media campaign, and in a radio campaign for the American Institute of Architects. In September 2010, it was announced that Janney would be the voice of the Aly San San spokesdroid in the Disney attraction Star Tours – The Adventures Continue. The attraction later opened at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Disneyland. In October 2016, Janney became the first woman to receive the Alumni Award of The Hotchkiss School and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in the television industry, located at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard.
In interviews related to her role on Mom, Janney discussed her brother, Hal, who fought addiction for years before committing suicide. On March 4, 2018, Janney dedicated her Academy Award win to him during her acceptance speech.
