Biography
As the eldest member of the Cusack acting dynasty -- the sister of John, Joan, Susie, and Bill Cusack -- Ann Cusack was raised, like her siblings, in the affluent Chicago suburb of Evanston, but achieved fame and success as a comedic actress somewhat later than the others. Born in 1961, Cusack received her formal education at the Piven Theater Workshop (studying basic improvisation with Joyce and Byrne Piven) and later at New York University's Tisch School for the Arts, where she studied dramatic performance under the aegis of the legendary playwright and theatrical and film director
David Mamet. Cusack landed her premier feature-film role at the age of 30, as Shirley Baker, a WWII-era baseball player with a more than slight illiteracy problem, in
Penny Marshall's summer 1992 comedy
A League of Their Own (alongside
Tom Hanks,
Geena Davis,
Madonna, and
Rosie O'Donnell). In the process, Cusack imparted to the film some of its biggest and most unanticipated laughs -- no mean feat, given that cast.
The turn did not go unnoticed, and parts rolled in steadily for the remainder of the 1990s and into the 2000s. The characterizations began small, with low billing -- such as that of a waitress in
Harold Becker's poorly received 1993 thriller
Malice, and that of a TV woman in
Mike Nichols' 1996
La Cage aux Folles redo
The Birdcage. Not long after, however, Cusack received her highest television billing (up through that time) when cast as Karen Foxworthy, TV wife and second-string to redneck-obsessed comedian
Jeff Foxworthy, in the
second season (1996-1997) of the short-lived sitcom
The Jeff Foxworthy Show. Unfortunately, the show folded in 1997.
The parts continued unabated, however, in films of varying reception. Cusack teamed up with her brothers John and Bill and sister Joan, as well as
Dan Aykroyd and
Minnie Driver, in the sadly overlooked dark comedy
Grosse Pointe Blank (1997, a work that John co-produced and co-scripted). Ann fared worse (as did the entire cast) by signing on for a re-team with director
Mike Nichols in that helmer's 2000 turkey What Planet Are You From?, starring
Annette Bening and
Garry Shandling. Cusack then made intermittent appearances on such series programs as
Charmed and
Frasier during the late '90s and early 2000s. In 2006, Cusack essayed the supporting role of Deanna in Aaron Wiederspahn's
The Sensation of Sight (2006), a moody, evocative drama (and festival
cause célèbre) about a dissatisfied middle-class man (
David Strathairn) who drops out of his life and takes a job selling encyclopedias. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide