Walter was born on August 3, 1963, in Silver Spring, Maryland.[2] She and her older sister, Laura, are the children of a British geophysicist father who was born in France of Alsatian descent and a substitute-teacher mother of Sicilian descent. Walter's maternal great-grandparents immigrated to New York City from Italy.[3][4][5] Walter's family lived in different places following their father's work, and their childhood homes included Germany and the suburbs of Washington, D.C.[6][7] She graduated with a theater degree from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1983.[6]
Career
After five years of standup comedy, Walter starred in her own Fox Network comedy series, My Wildest Dreams (1995), followed by an ABC sitcom, Life's Work (1996–1997), which she both created and starred in. Walter also co-starred in the Bravo series Breaking News and in the NBC sitcom Emeril.[8] She played Whoopi Goldberg's tarty sidekick Claudine in Eddie (1996).
Walter co-starred in the Disney film The Parent Trap (1998); in the remake of the original film, she appeared as Chessy, the nanny to Dennis Quaid's character's daughter, who was played by a young Lindsay Lohan. Since then, she played supporting roles in the comedy Bruce Almighty (2003) and the romantic comedy Shall We Dance (2004).
In early 2007, Walter had a supporting role as Mabel, the bartender in the MyNetworkTV soap opera Watch Over Me. Later that May, she served as a judge on the ABC reality TV show The Next Best Thing, which searched for the best celebrity impersonators in America. In early 2008, Walter was in the comedy film Drillbit Taylor, and also starred in the VH1 reality series Celebracadabra, in which celebrities competed to see who was the best magician among them. She made it to the final three but was eliminated in the sixth episode. She has developed a series for the Oxygen network called Dance Your Ass Off. On December 19, 2011, she played a dramatic role on the TNT series Rizzoli & Isles as a ballet coach.
Walter in 2015
Her comic memoir, The Best Thing About My Ass Is That It's Behind Me, was published in May 2011.[9] Beginning in May 2011, Walter hosted The Fabulous Lisa Ann Walter Show, a talk show on the Los Angeles radio station KFI. The program aired for three hours each Saturday and Sunday. In August 2014, Walter quit to focus on her acting career.[10]
In 1983, she married fellow actor Sam Baum. They had a son, Jordan (1988), and a daughter, Delia (1992),[18] before divorcing in 1999. She has twin sons, Spencer and Simon Walter (born October 11, 2000).[19][20][21][22]
↑"Lisa Ann Walter on 'Abbott Elementary,' her South Philly accent, and more". Audacy. July 19, 2024. Retrieved August 28, 2024. My mother was a Sicilian lady. she taught in D.C. in an urban environment as well. She was incredibly dedicated, loved her kids, fought for them, was tough, she really expected a lot. She was also just a great lady and very smart. Culturally, it was weird she went to college [...] She was a first generation that grew up in Little Italy in New York and then in Brooklyn, and they didn't do that.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
↑"'Parent Trap' stars Lisa Ann Walter and Elaine Hendrix discover an ancestry connection". Today.com. September 18, 2023. Retrieved August 28, 2024. According to marriage records from the New York City Municipal Archives, Walter's maternal great-grandfather, Francesco Mansueto, lived at 250 Elizabeth Street after he immigrated from Italy to the U.S., while Hendrix's great-grandfather, Dominick DePersio, resided at 190 Elizabeth Street.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
12Knutzen, Eirik (October 20, 1996). "Pennsylvanians Collaborate on 'Life's Work'". The Morning Call. Allentown, Pennsylvania. Retrieved July 19, 2020. Born in Bellefonte to a geophysicist father born in Alsace and a substitute teacher mother from Sicily, Walter and her older sister, Laura, grew up on the road as their father's profession took them to the Max Planek Institute in Germany and NASA positions in the Washington, D.C. area.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
