by SP

Just as Steven Eckholdt, who plays Henry in The L Word can be called ‘Your Sitcom Guy’, Jane Lynch is another actress that has such a familiar face that seems to be everywhere on television. As she said in her interview to TVGuide (Jane Lynch Enters the Dating Game by Matt Webb Mitovich (June, 2006)) while talking about her and her co-stars in the new show Lovespring International (Lifetime, 2006), “The six of us, we’ve been guest stars on sitcoms where we’ll come in and do the funny scene and leave, but we don’t have name recognition, just a bit of face recognition.”

In the same interview she also added, “It feels like I don't work a lot though. A day here, a day there — it just all seems to play at the same time, giving the people the impression that I am omnipresent. I sit around a lot and watch Hardball and HGTV, thinking, ‘God, will the phone ever ring again?’”

It also mentioned in Interview with PlanetOut by Jenny Stewart (March 3, 2005) that when Jane Lynch was filming a scene with Meryl Streep in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Lynch was shocked that one of her favorite actresses was actually her fan as well. “… it’s not surprising at all to anyone familiar with Lynch’s work. Whether she’s ad-libbing in Christopher Guest films or guest-starring on various TV shows and in feature films, Jane Lynch is quickly becoming one of Hollywood’s most memorable scene-stealers – even if people don’t know her name. In fact, the mention of one of her roles almost always elicits the same response: ‘Oh, that’s Jane Lynch? I love her!’”

But how does Jane Lynch feel about acting mainly in supporting roles? In Interview with Jane Lynchby Sarah Warn (AfterEllen.com, November 2004) the actress was asked if she wanted to be another Julia Roberts and Lynch replied “I think my day has passed. No, actually, I prefer doing the supporting roles, because then I can show up in any guise.”

Indeed, if we look at Lynch’s filmography, the actress appeared in numerous films and TV shows. As we read in the same AfterEllen interview, “In the ten years since she moved to L.A., Jane Lynch has acted in more films and TV shows than many actresses do in their entire career, playing a variety of roles that include a memorable turn as Jennifer Coolidge’s lesbian lover in Best in Show, and a lesbian lawyer on the next season of The L Word.”

Everyone agrees that Lynch’s role in Best in Show (2000) was her breakthrough role. In above-mentioned Interview with PlanetOut her role in that movie was described as follows, “Lynch’s role as competitive lesbian dog trainer Christy Cummings in Best in Show was indeed a breakout. The unknown actress did more than hold her own amongst seasoned comedic actors like Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara, she actually managed to steal scenes with an intuitively hilarious, often ad-libbed performance (“We started this magazine, ‘American Bitch.’ It’s a focus on the issues of the lesbian purebred dog owner.”).”

In Catching up with Jane Lynch interview from jamaica-gleaner.com (June, 2006) Lynch described her feelings about her role in Best in Show, “I felt like I was going to be ‘found out,’ like they know I don’t know what I’m doing. Jennifer Coolidge and I were both nervous and were very supportive of one another. We were just stumbling our way through together. As we filmed our scenes together, we thought that we were not funny. We thought he’d have nothing to work with. Then we saw the film, and Christopher Guest pieced it together in such a way, it showed his true genius. I was just so glad to be a part of it.”

After that Lynch appeared in more TV shows and films and, as the PlanetOut interview describes it, “Five years later, Lynch is one of the hardest-working and most respected supporting actresses around. This past year, she’s had recurring comedic guest roles on both Two and Half Men and Arrested Development, serious stints on CSI and Veronica Mars and, yes, that is her playing Amelia Earhart in the Oscar-nominated Martin Scorsese film The Aviator.”

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