September 22 - Bonnie Lynn Hunt

On this day, in 1961, Bonnie Lynn Hunt was born in Chicago, Illinois. As the sixth of seven children in an Irish/Polish Catholic family, Bonnie learned early on that life can be noisy and chaotic and that it helps if you know how to improvise.

Bonnie worked part time as a nurse's aide while attending Chicago's Notre Dame High School for Girls. After graduation she became a nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in oncology. Since the cancer ward of a hospital doesn't lend itself to much in the way of lightheartedness, Bonnie co-founded an improv group in 1984 called An Impulsive Thing. Two years later she joined Second City, keeping her day job to pay the bills. Two years after that, she had a life-changing lunch break: an audition for the movie Rainman.

Bonnie got the part of waitress Sally Dibbs in the Dustin Hoffman/Tom Cruise vehicle. Two years later (there seems to be a pattern forming here) she would appear on the small screen in a show called Grand. I loved that show, at least the first season of it, but the network managed to kill it in the second season, like so many things the networks touch, and it died a horrible death. She was offered a role on Saturday Night Live but turned it down as she prefers more improvisation than Lorne Michaels does. She also declined a replacement role on Designing Women, instead joining season two of the Randy Quaid/Johnathan Winters sitcom, Davis Rules, in 1992. Unfortunately, season two was also that shows last season. In 1993, she had a sitcom that lasted only five episodes, The Building, that was filmed live and generally left any mistakes in. Two years later, a good chunk of the cast of The Building would return for Bonnie, another attempt at an improvisational loose comedy. Alas, it was critically acclaimed (again I found myself in the minority that loved it) but only made it 11 episodes.

Bonnie had returned to the big screen in 1992 in Beethoven with Charles Grodin. A sequel happened the following year, as well as a turn in Dave with Kevin Kline. For the next several years, Bonnie worked steadily in such films as Jumanji, Jerry Maguire and The Green Mile, which earned her a SAG Award nomination. In 2000, she wrote and directed the movie Return to Me starring David Duchovny, Minnie Driver and Carol O'Connor in his final performance. In 2003, she starred with Steve Martin in Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel, you guessed it, two years later.

In 2007, she tried her hand at hosting a talk show. The Bonnie Hunt Show was loosely modeled after Live with Regis and Kelly in that Bonnie made a point of interacting with the audience as much as possible. The show ran for three seasons and earned Bonnie a Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Talk Show Host in 2010.

You many have noticed that there are some gaps in Bonnie's history so far. That's because starting in 1998, Bonnie has had an increasing presence in the Disney catalog, mostly in Pixar films. Her first character was Rosie in A Bug's Life. She next appeared as Mrs. Flint in Monsters, Inc. Bonnie then played Sally Carrera in Cars, for which she also received writing credit, Dolly in Toy Story 3, Sally again in Cars 2, Karen Graves in Monsters University, Bonnie Hopps in Zootopia and Sally again in Cars 3. She also has a recurring role on Sophia the First as Aunt Tilly. Bonnie also starred in a sitcom produced by Touchstone Television from 2002-04 called Life with Bonnie, earning Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy nominations along the way.

When not lending her voice to subtly hilarious characters, Bonnie is, as all real Chicagoans are, an avid Cubs fan and, in a nod to her former profession, a board member and ardent supporter of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.