Name	Lili Taylor
Height	5' 2"
Naionality	American
Date of Birth	20 February 1967
Place of Birth	Glencoe, Illinois, USA
Famous for

Raised in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, Lili Taylor developed a love for acting in grade school and after attending DePaul University's Theatre School of Drama, she perfected her craft for a time alongside the likes of Aidan Quinn, John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Ann Cusack, Jeremy Piven and Lara Flynn Boyle in Evanston's Piven Theater. Making her professional stage debut in the Northlight Theatre production “Bing and Walker” in 1984, Taylor spent an “exchange” season on-stage in Czechoslovakia during 1987. Upon returning to America, she headed to New York in 1988 and soon had her first NYC stage debut in “What Did He See?”

It was also in 1988 that Taylor had her first taste of acting in front of the film camera when she got a bit part in “She's Having a Baby,” a comedy written and directed by John Hughes. The role gained the newcomer little attention, but she hit it big with her second outing in the Donald Petrie comedy/drama “Mystic Pizza” (1988), in which she starred with Julia Roberts and Annabeth Gish. She scored the same success with her subsequent role as the uproariously obsessive best friend of John Cusack in Cameron Crowe's “Say Anything...” (1989), which marked her first feature film with Cusack. She closed out the decade with a small, but affective role as a Vietnam War widow in Oliver Stone's “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989), starring Tom Cruise.

Taylor, who made her TV-movie debut in ABC's “Night of Courage,” returned to the small screen in the early 1990s to appear in the PBS film “Sensibility and Sense,” playing the younger Elaine Stritch, and the CBS miniseries “Family of Spies” (both 1990). She resumed her movie career by starring as the vagabond sister of a convict in “Bright Angel” (1991), for which she received an Independent Spirit nomination for Best Female Lead, and gave an impressive performance in Nancy Savoca's “Dogfight” (1991), co-starring River Phoenix.

Taylor was a standout as Grace Stalker in the comedy “Arizona Dream” (1992, released in the USA in 1995), directed by Emir Kusturica and also starring Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway. She rejoined director Nancy Savoca for the ensemble drama “Household Saints” (1993) and was seen with Andie MacDowell, Julianne Moore, Matthew Modine, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jack Lemmon in Robert Altman's “Short Cuts” (1993), for which she jointly nabbed a Golden Globe and Venice Film Festival for Best Ensemble Cast. Still in 1993, she also played the supporting role of a hometown girl left behind by Sean Astin in the atypical sports drama “Rudy” and acted in an Off-Broadway production of “Aven'U Boys.”

After playing the small role of Edna Ferber in Alan Rudolph's “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle” (1994), Taylor was reunited with Altman for “Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear” (1994). Along with Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Jean-Pierre Cassel and Kim Basinger, among other costars, she shared a National Board of Review for Best Acting by an Ensemble. The following year, she designed costumes for Michael Imperioli's stage production, “A Candle in the Window.”

A notable presence on the independent circuits, Taylor delivered a bright starring turn as a philosophy student-turned-vampire in the Abel Ferrara-helmed “The Addiction” (1995) and won a 1997 Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema award for Best Actress and a 1998 Sant Jordi for Best Foreign Actress for her work in the film. She also received recognition with her starring roles in “Cold Fever,” screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September 1995, and “Girls Town” (1996), which also marked Taylor's debut as a screenwriter. Taylor won even more praise in director Mary Harron's “I Shot Andy Warhol” (1996), where she was cast as radical feminist Valerie Solanas who tried to murder the notable artist. She picked up a Special Recognition Award at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and a Stockholm Film Festival for Best Actress for her performance in the film, as well as a Seattle International Film Festival's Golden Space Needle in the category of Best Actress for her work in the latter three projects.

In the meantime, Taylor's work in “The Addiction” attracted the attention of Ron Howard, who cast the actress in the mainstream film “Ransom” (1996), playing one of the kidnappers, Maris Conner. Costarring with Mel Gibson, Rene Russo and Gary Sinise, she took home a 1997 Blockbuster Entertainment for Favorite Supporting Actress in Suspense. 1996 also found Taylor starring opposite Andrew McCarthy and Debi Mazar in the indie-drama “Things I Never Told You” (1996), from which she earned a Best Actress Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.

Taylor revisited the New York stage in 1997 to play the twenty-something Irina in Scott Elliott's production of Anton Chekhov's “The Three Sisters,” alongside Amy Irving and Jeanne Tripplehorn. The same year, she also returned to the small screen with boyfriend Michael Rapaport in “The Listeners,” a segment of HBO's “Subway Stories: Tales from the Underground” helmed by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld. The active performer went on to have guest spots in two high-profile series, NBC's “Mad About You” (2 episodes, 1997-1998) and Fox's “The X-Files” (1998), where Taylor's role as Marty Glenn in the episode “Mind's Eye” garnered her an Emmy nomination. She then teamed up with John Waters for the writer-director's ensemble piece “Pecker” (1998) and had a featured role in Stanley Tucci's “The Imposters” (1998). She next starred as the plain and foolish Evie Decker in the Sundance-screened “A Slipping Down Life” (1999), which would later win Taylor a Special Jury Prize Award at the 2004 Indianapolis International Film Festival and an Achievement Award at the 2004 Newport Beach Film Festival, and earned a Blockbuster Entertainment nomination for her supporting role in the Jan De Bont big-budget horror remake “The Haunting” (1999).

Entering the new millennium, Stephen Frears cast Taylor as a broken-hearted manic-depressive who dumped John Cusack in his comedy, “High Fidelity” (2000). She headlined the based-on-play drama “Julie Johnson” (also 2000), playing a 31-year-old New Jersey homemaker attempting to realize the dreams she never knew she had, and costarred with Judy Davis and Marcia Gay Harden in the Cannes-premiered “Gaudi Afternoon” (2001). From 2000 to 2001, Taylor played Hildy Baker on the NBC series “Deadline,” opposite Oliver Platt and Bebe Neuwirth, and was cast as Miep Van Gies in the 2001 TV film “Anne Frank: The Whole Story” (2001) and as Judy Parker in the HBO original movie “Live from Baghdad” (2002), alongside Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter.

It was in 2002 that Taylor landed her first major gig on television playing the ill-fated Lisa Kimmel Fisher in the acclaimed HBO drama “Six Feet Under,” a role that brought the actress a 2004 SAG for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series and a 2002 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. She stayed with the show until its final season in 2005. Meanwhile, Taylor also enjoyed big screen success with the comedy “Factotum” (2005), opposite Matt Dillon and Marisa Tomei. Playing Jan, she won a San Diego Film Critics Society for Best Supporting Actress and a Copenhagen International Film Festival for Best Actress. Also in 2005, she supported Gretchen Mol in the biopic “The Notorious Bettie Page.”
In 2007, Taylor had supporting roles in the drama “Starting Out in the Evening” and the horror/thriller “Si j'étais toi/ The Secret,” starring David Duchovny. She also starred in the comedy/drama series “State of Mind.”