Julia Sweeney

Julia Sweeney is an actress, comedian, writer and film director. She was born in the U.S. in Spokane, Washington in 1959. She’s appeared on numerous film and television shows and is well known for her years on Saturday Night Live. She has created several comedic one-person shows.

Sweeney spent four and a half years on Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1994. Her most popular recurring character was Pat, an androgynous person who caused people to become confused. She also wrote and starred in a film about Pat entitled It’s Pat! This film had a dismal reception at the box office and was universally panned by critics. That was basically the end of Pat, although the character still seems to be part of American popular culture.

After Sweeney left Saturday Night Live, she became most well known as a monologist. Her first one-person show was entitled God Said Ha! which chronicled a terrible year when she and her brother were both diagnosed with cancer. This show was a tremendous success; it played in several U.S. cities and on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater in 1997. The audio of the show was nominated for a Grammy. Quentin Tarantino produced a film version of the show, which Sweeney directed. It still plays on cable.

Sweeney’s second monologue was entitled In the Family Way. It chronicled Sweeney’s quest to become a mother and her eventual adoption of a child as a single person. She did theater runs of this show in New York off-Broadway and in Los Angeles.

Sweeney’s third monologue was Letting Go of God. It’s a story about her quest to find a God in which she could truly believe. She chronicles her discovery of science and her slow, but firm, adoption of a scientific worldview. She becomes openly secular, even withstanding the rejection of her parents. Sweeney performed this show all over the world, including in New York and Los Angeles. The play won numerous awards. The film of the show, which Sweeney directed, played on Showtime.

In 2013, Sweeney wrote a memoir, "If Its Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother", published by Simon and Schuster.

In 2018, Sweeney opened her show, Julia Sweeney: Older & Wider, at The Second City in Chicago. It opened in Los Angeles in 2019. In 2008 Sweeney married Michael Blum, and he adopted her daughter. Michael is a biophysicist. They lived in the Chicago area for ten years. In 2019, they relocated to Los Angeles.