Julia Sweeney

Julia Sweeney is an actress, comedian, writer, and film director. She was born in the U.S. in Spokane, Washington in 1959. She’s appeared on numerous film and television shows and is well known for her years on "Saturday Night Live." She has created several comedic one-person shows.

After Sweeney left "Saturday Night Live," she became most well known as a monologist. Her first one-person show was entitled "God Said Ha!" which chronicled a terrible year when she and her brother were both diagnosed with cancer. This show was a tremendous success; it played in several U.S. cities and on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater in 1997. The audio of the show was nominated for a Grammy. Quentin Tarantino produced a film version of the show, which Sweeney directed.

Sweeney’s second monologue was entitled "In the Family Way." It chronicled Sweeney’s quest to become a mother and her eventual adoption of a child as a single person. She did theater runs of this show in New York off-Broadway and in Los Angeles. Sweeney’s third monologue was "Letting Go of God." It’s a story about her quest to find a God in which she could truly believe. She chronicles her discovery of science and her slow, but firm, adoption of a scientific worldview. She becomes openly secular, even withstanding the rejection of her parents. Sweeney performed this show all over the world, including in New York and Los Angeles. The play won numerous awards. The film of the show, which Sweeney directed, played on Showtime.

In 2013, Sweeney wrote a memoir, "If Its Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother," published by Simon and Schuster. In 2018, she opened her show, "Julia Sweeney: Older & Wider," which ran until 2022.