Comedic actress Christine Taylor was best known for her 1995 portrayal of Marcia Brady in “The Brady Bunch Movie,” which quickly generated buzz, what with her dead-on impression of 1970s TV icon Maureen McCormick. After many supporting roles in films and sitcoms, Taylor’s 2000 marriage to actor-director Ben Stiller raised her profile even higher and she co-starred opposite her husband in “Zoolander” (2001) and “Dodgeball” (2004). In 2006, the couple inked a deal to star in a domestic sitcom for CBS but while the project experienced delays, Taylor appeared in the 2007 indie filmfest fave, “Kabluey.”
Christine Taylor was born on July 30, 1971, in working-class Allentown, PA. She was raised in a conservative environment, attending a small Catholic school, but also took classes at the Allentown Theater School and got her acting feet wet in local productions of “Grease” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” With the help of an enthusiastic stage mother, Taylor found acting work in commercials as a kid and teenager, and when she was a senior in high school, landed her big break with a role on one of Nickelodeon’s earliest live action series, “Hey Dude” (Nickelodeon, 1989-1991).
Taylor stayed with the show for its two year run before moving to Los Angeles, where she easily found guest work on sitcoms like "Life Goes On” (ABC, 1989-1993), “Saved by the Bell”(NBC, 1989-1993), and "Blossom" (NBC, 1991-95). In 1992, she joined the cast of the now-legendary stage spoof "The Real Live Brady Bunch" at the Westwood Playhouse, in a role that people had been telling her she was born to play all her life – due in no small part to her striking physical similarity to original Marcia, Maureen McCormick.
Taylor made her feature film debut the following year (as Christine Joan Taylor) in "Calendar Girl" (1993) with Jason Priestly, as well as appeared in "Showdown" (1993) and "Night of the Demons II" (1994) before she learned of casting for a feature film based on the iconic series, “The Brady Bunch” (ABC, 1969-1974). Thanks to her “Real Live” stage time, she had nailed the oldest Brady sister’s mannerisms to a tee, right down to the punctuating flip of her very blonde hair. Not surprisingly, she won the role of Marcia. The film was healthy at the box office, with critics singling out newcomer Taylor’s performance as the best in the bunch.
In another nod to sitcom history, Taylor also assumed the role of Marilyn, the niece of Herman and Lily Munster, in the Fox TV-movie "Here Come the Munsters" later that same year. With 1996’s "A Very Brady Sequel" (1996), Taylor seemed dangerously close to being typecast forever in retro TV roles, but she quickly recovered with a supporting role in the teen goth thriller “The Craft" (1996) and in the title role of an extravagant raver in "Party Girl" (1996), a Fox sitcom based on the film starring Parker Posey.
Taylor swiftly built up career momentum with a series of well-executed turns in high-profile comedies, both big and small screen: playing Jerry’s “too perfect” girlfriend on “Seinfeld” (NBC, 1989-1998), Drew Barrymore's best friend Holly in "The Wedding Singer" (1998), and Ross' love interest whom Rachel talks into shaving her head bald on “Friends” (1994-2004). In 1999, she was fortunate to land a starring role as a no-nonsense sheriff in the unaired but now legendary TV pilot "Heat Vision and Jack" (1999) starring Jack Black. Taylor met and began dating the show’s director, Ben Stiller, and the two subsequently married in 2000. Not long afterwards the couple played opposite one another in the huge hit “Zoolander” (2001), with Taylor acting as the buttoned-up investigative reporter researching the vapid supermodel (Stiller) and eventually falling for him.
In 2001, Taylor gave birth to the couple’s first child, Ella Olivia Stiller, so she decided to spend a year and a half out of the spotlight undertaking the important duty of raising possibly a third generation of comic genius that had begun with her husband’s parents, legendary comics Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. In 2004, she returned to the big screen again opposite Stiller – really opposite him — as a fierce sports competitor in “Dodge Ball” (2004). The couple followed up their second successful screen pairing with the birth of a second child in 2005 and plans to develop an “alternative” single-camera comedy along the lines of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (HBO, 2000- ), on which Taylor had guested several times.
In 2006, the Taylor-Stillers signed a contract with CBS for a self-referential sitcom where Taylor would play a small town girl-turned-movie star, with Stiller slated to direct and also appear as her husband Ben Stiller. Independent of the burgeoning family business, Taylor continued to establish her talent with a performance in the oddball independent film “Kabluey” (2007), which received rave reviews at film festivals throughout the country.