Annie Mumolo

Born into an Italian-American family in Irvine, CA, Mumolo first began performing comedy while still in grade school. She found that she enjoyed making people laugh, and from there she set her sights on a career as an actress. After a brief detour as a history major at U.C. Berkeley, where she would later earn her B.A., Mumolo moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s to pursue her acting career in earnest. She became a member of L.A.'s famed comedy troupe The Groundlings, where she honed both her performing skills and her comedy writing chops. By the mid-2000s, Mumolo started landing small parts in movies and TV shows, including "Bewitched" (2005) and "Two and a Half Men" (CBS 2003-15). She also started lending her voice to various animated TV programs like "Random! Cartoons" (Nickelodeon 2007-09) and "The Penguins of Madagascar" (Nickelodeon 2008-), before she and fellow Groundlings alum Kristen Wiig decided to team up to write a female-driven wedding comedy. " Bridesmaids" grossed nearly $300 million worldwide when it debuted in May of 2011. The film earned Oscar nods for Mumolo and Wiig for their screenplay, as well as a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the film's co-star, Melissa McCarthy. In the years following the smash success of "Bridesmaids," Mumolo continued to work steadily as a guest star on sitcoms like "The Goldbergs" (ABC 2013-) and "Rake" (Fox 2014), before nabbing her first series regular role on "About a Boy." The show, about a depressed single mother and her awkward son who move in next door to a thirtysomething bachelor, debuted on NBC in February, 2014, and is based on the novel of the same name by the British writer Nick Hornby.