Attractive English performer who has enjoyed modest success on American TV. Leeves moved to New York at age 21 with $1,000 dollars. After spending a few years as a starving artist she returned to her native England where she worked on "The Benny Hill Show". Leeves returned to America, landing a role in "To Live and Die in L.A." (1985). The next year she was cast in the syndicated ensemble comedy "Throb". Leeves is probably best known for her recurring roles on "Murphy Brown", as the flighty girlfriend of Miles Silverberg (Grant Shaud) and "Seinfeld", as Marla the Virgin, who passes up Jerry for John F. Kennedy, Jr. in a celebrated episode entitled "The Contest". Leeves next became a regular on the "Cheers" spin-off, "Frasier", as Daphne Moon, the "half-psychic" live-in caretaker of Martin Crane (John Mahoney) and long-standing love interest of the ever-neurotic Niles Crane (David Hyde Pierce), a role she would play throughout the series' entire ten-year run.
In 1996, Leeves reached a new audience by providing the voice of the motherly Ladybug in the animated feature "James and the Giant Peach". In the TV thriller "Pandora's Clock" (1996) she was one of the passengers aboard a plane carrying a terrorist's Doomsday Virus, and Leeves had supporting roles in the feature films "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" and "Music of the Heart" (both 1999), and "The Event" (2003).