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Anne Meara

Anne Meara was a Brooklyn-born actor and comedian whose career moved easily between live performance, film and television. Her comedy began after she met actor-comedian Jerry Stiller in 1953. The two married and joined the improvisational company The Compass Players before forming Stiller and Meara, the partnership that made them nationally known. Their routines found humor in relationships and domestic friction, often drawing on the contrast between Stiller’s Jewish background and Meara’s Catholic background. Warmth was central to the act, even when the pair were teasing out the frustrations of married life. By the late 1960s, they were the leading couple comedy team in the country. They appeared 36 times on The Ed Sullivan Show, performed on programs including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and released a successful live comedy album in 1963. They ended the act around 1970 because the boundary between performance and marriage had become difficult to maintain. Meara’s work extended well beyond the double act. She made her off-Broadway debut in the 1958 production Ulysses in Nighttown and later wrote the comedy After-Play, which was produced off-Broadway in 1995. On television, she starred in the short-lived CBS drama Kate McShane, earning an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1976. She also had recurring or regular roles in Rhoda, Archie Bunker’s Place, ALF, Sex and the City and The King of Queens. Her film work included The Boys from Brazil and Fame, where she played English teacher Elizabeth Sherwood. These roles showed the range behind her comedy reputation: Meara could bring humor to a scene, but she was never limited to delivering punchlines. Later, she reunited professionally with Stiller for the web series Stiller & Meara, returning to the partnership that had shaped such a distinctive part of her career.