Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Louis-Dreyfus was born in New York City, the daughter of French billionaire Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, and broke into comedy as a performer with the Practical Theatre Company in Chicago. This led to her being cast in the sketch show Saturday Night Live. Her breakthrough came in 1990 with her debut at the start of a nine-season run on Seinfeld, which became one of the most critically and commercially successful sitcoms. In addition to leading roles on The New Adventures of Old Christine and Veep, she has made guest appearances on shows such as Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and 30 Rock. On film, Louis-Dreyfus has had supporting film roles in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), Deconstructing Harry (1997), and You People (2023), and leading film roles in Enough Said (2013), Downhill (2020), You Hurt My Feelings (2023), and Tuesday (2023). Her voice acting work includes A Bug's Life (1998), Planes (2013), and Onward (2020). Since 2021 she has played Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


Louis-Dreyfus has received 11 Primetime Emmy Awards (eight for acting and three for producing) in addition to nine Screen Actors Guild Awards and one Golden Globe Award. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2014. She was named as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world in 2016.^[5] She has also received numerous honors including the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2018 and the National Medal of Arts in 2021.^[6][7]

Early life[edit]

Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus^[8] was born in New York City on January 13, 1961.^[9] Her mother, Judith (née LeFever), is an American writer and special needs educator.^[8] Her father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus (1932–2016), was a French billionaire who served as chairman of the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus (1908–2011), was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group commodities and shipping conglomerate.^[10] He was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace,^[11][12] and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II.^[13] Louis-Dreyfus is the great-great-granddaughter of French businessman Léopold Louis-Dreyfus (1833–1915), founder of the Louis Dreyfus Group, which members of her family still control.^[14] She is the fifth cousin four times removed of Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935) of the infamous Dreyfus affair.^[15][16][17] Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), her father's second cousin, was the CEO of Adidas and owner of the soccer team Olympique de Marseille.^[18] Julia's paternal grandmother was the daughter of a Brazilian-Jewish father (whose family was Dutch, English, and Polish).^[19]


In 1962, a year after her birth, Louis-Dreyfus' parents divorced. She has said that she first noticed her penchant for comedy after sticking raisins up her nose at the age of three, which first made her mother laugh but then led to an emergency hospital visit.^[20] After moving to Washington, D.C., when Louis-Dreyfus was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School;^[8][21] Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister, Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, she spent her childhood in several U.S. states and countries such as Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia.^[22][23] In 1979, she graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland.^[24] She later said of the school, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."^[25]


Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live.^[26] In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.^[27]

Advocacy and politics[edit]

Louis-Dreyfus supported Al Gore's 2000 U.S. presidential bid and Barack Obama's bid for the presidency in both 2008^[102] and 2012.^[103] She appeared in a video that urged Obama to reject the proposal of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that if the pipeline ever were to leak, it would cause massive pollution across the U.S.^[104] She has voiced her concern for several environmental issues and has raised millions for Heal the Bay, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Trust for Public Land. She also worked for the successful passage of Proposition O, which allocated $500 million for cleaning up the Los Angeles water supply.^[105]


In October 2010, before the U.S. Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy.^[106]


During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Louis-Dreyfus announced her support for Hillary Clinton in that year's presidential election.^[107]


In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order referred to as the "Muslim ban" as "un-American" and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."^[108]


Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden.^[109] She has also published information regarding voting by mail^[110] and urged all Americans to vote.^[111] Louis-Dreyfus endorsed Representative Karen Bass in the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election, in various social media posts.^[112]