Occupation Actress/Writer Role Actress | Name Spencer Kayden Years active 1996–present Children Haskell Ace Harelik | |
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Movies and TV shows Mad TV, Blue's Big Musical Movie, Blue's Clues: Blue Talks, Pipe Dream | ||
Spencer Kayden (born 1971) is an American actress and writer. Kayden is most notable for playing Little Sally in the Broadway musical Urinetown and for her membership in the recurring cast of comedians on sketch comedy series MADtv.
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Biography
Spencer Kayden was born in 1971 in Costa Mesa, California, the only girl out of three boys, to a father who worked as a pop-up book publisher and a mother who worked as a psychotherapist. Kayden grew up in Orange County, California and went on to study drama at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. She joined the Chicago cast of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and moved to New York in 1993 to start the New York run of the show.
Kayden received critical acclaim and notice for her performance in the musical Urinetown, where she played Little Sally, the pig-tailed girl who helps explain the plot. She played in the 1999 New York International Fringe Festival production, and then was in the original Off-Broadway and Broadway casts in 2001 and returned in 2003. The CurtainUp reviewer noted in reviewing the Off-Broadway production: "But while Spencer Kayden does everything right in her portrayal of the droll little girl who alternates begging for 'penny for a pee' with Shirley Temple/Charlie McCarthy exchanges with the deceptively kindly neighborhood cop, her Sally is wrong. This 'bad' idea is outrageously good for lots of laughs. The central joke works."
It is from her theater performances that she was discovered by Fox executives and cast as a featured performer on MADtv.
Kayden also played the role of Mrs. Pepper in the popular Nickelodeon kids series Blue's Clues.
Kayden starred in the farce Don't Dress for Dinner at the Royal George Theatre, Chicago, Illinois, from November 2008 to January 2009. She reprised her role as the cook in the Broadway production, which opened in March 2012 at the American Airlines Theatre.
Awards
Kayden received the 2001 Clarence Derwent and Outer Critics Circle Awards and was nominated for the Tony, Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk Awards for her performance as Little Sally in Urinetown. Kayden was also nominated for the 2012 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her turn in Don't Dress for Dinner.
Personal life
Kayden is the sister of film director Michael Almereyda. She has been married to actor Mark Harelik since 2004, and they have one child together. She has listed Irene Dunne, Peter Sellers and Frances McDormand as some her acting idols.