Cheryl Hines

Early life

Hines was born Cheryl Ruth Hines in Miami Beach, Florida, a daughter of James and Rosemary Hines.

Part of her family came from Frostproof, Florida, but she grew up in Tallahassee, where she was a member of the Young Actors Theatre throughout high school. Hines also attended Lively Technical Center and Tallahassee Community College in Tallahassee. She was raised Catholic and has two brothers and a sister. She attended West Virginia University and Florida State University before graduating from the University of Central Florida.

Career

Before getting her break in Hollywood, Hines worked as a waitress, television reporter, and telephone operator, as well as 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 has had guest appearances on television 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 an 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.

In 2009, Hines starred in the ABC sitcom In the Motherhood. It was loosely an adaptation to the web series. She played Jane. The series was short-lived lasting 5 out of 7 episodes due to low ratings.

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 films based on their series The Fairly OddParents, A Fairly Odd Movie: Grow Up Timmy Turner! and A Fairly Odd Christmas. She played Wanda, the main character's (Timmy's) godmother.

Hines serves as the executive producer for the 2010 reality series School Pride, which follows the renovation of a different school each week. Hines starred as Dallas Royce on the ABC sitcom Suburgatory and in We Need Help a web series aired on Yahoo Screen.

On January 29, 2014, Hines received the 2,516th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Personal life and charities

Hines married Paul Young, founder of the management firm Principato-Young, on December 30, 2002. They have one child, daughter Catherine Rose Young, b. March 8, 2004. On July 20, 2010, Hines and Young filed papers for their divorce after nearly eight years of marriage.

Upon discovering that her nephew was born with cerebral palsy, Hines contacted United Cerebral Palsy for answers and resources. Over time, she became involved with UCP and has used her celebrity status to help elevate its visibility. Hines serves on the Board of Trustees of United Cerebral Palsy. Hines and her family won $25,000 for UCP on the July 12, 2015 episode of Celebrity Family Feud.

In December 2011 Hines began dating activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. They announced their engagement late April 2014 and were married on August 2, 2014.