Nancy Travis Biography
Born: September 21, 1961
The ever-fascinating Nancy Travis excelled in edgy, neurotic characterizations during the 1990s; she sounds like a chain-smoker or Valium-popper even when not playing one. Graduating with a BA degree from New York University, Travis apprenticed at Circle in the Square, acted in the touring company of Neil_Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, and starred on Broadway with Judd_Hirsch in I'm Not Rappaport. As a means of continually recharging her creative batteries, she helped found the Naked Angels, an off-Broadway acting troupe. After laboring in virtual anonymity in such TV movies as Malice in Wonderland (1985), Travis was afforded top billing in the 1986 two-parter Harem, lending a little artistry and dignity to an otherwise trivial affair. Her movie breakthrough was in the role of the errant, unmarried British mother Sylvia in Three Men and a Baby (1987) and its 1990 sequel Three Men and a Little Lady. More complex roles came her way in Internal_Affairs (1992), The Vanishing (1993) and Chaplin (1993); in the latter film, she appeared as the real-life Joan_Barry, whose spiteful and unfounded paternity suit against Charlie_Chaplin (Robert Downey Jr.) was the beginning of the end of The Little Tramp's Hollywood career. Even when playing comedy in So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), Travis retained her ticking-bomb, "don't turn your back on me" aura. Nancy Travis' television credits of the 1990s include her gravelly voiceover work as Aunt Bernice on the animated weekly Duckman (1993- ) and her starring stint on the so-so 1995 sitcom Almost Perfect. Hal Erickson, Rovi
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