Actress Kathryn Hahn is a vision in WandaVision, but there's more to know
about her than her turn as Agnes. Here's a look at her transformation over the years.
Kathryn Hahn was born in Westchester, Illinois on July 23, 1973, but grew up in Cleveland Heights,
Ohio as the daughter of Karen and Bill, who owned a computer supply business. Hahn
told Conan O'Brien in 2014 that her father was, quote, "the most frugal human being in America."
"The cheapest person you can possibly imagine. And I'm saying this with all due respect."
Frugal or not, Hahn's parents encouraged her to take acting lessons at a young age. In the
third grade, Hahn joined an acting program at the Cleveland Play House, as she told The Plain Dealer
in 2014. She added that the theater was her "happy place" and that she loved communing with older
actors. That's also when Hahn found her calling as an actor, as she explained on Fresh Air in 2019.
"It almost felt like it was decided for me, not by anyone in my life but just
by the universe. Like, it was just that was what I was going to do with my life."
When Kathryn Hahn was a fourth grader, she got a series regular job as Jenny on the Saturday
morning children's show Hickory Hideout. The show aired from 1981 to 1991 around the country.
"Cassie was gonna let me come and watch her babysit, so I can learn. Oh, you'll
learn alright. You'll learn you never want to be a babysitter."
Hahn's character, Jenny, would interact with squirrel puppets
named Nutso and Shirley Squirrely and an owl character named Know-It-Owl.
In 2019, WKYC began re-releasing Hickory Hideout episodes on YouTube to commemorate the show's
impact on the community and to introduce new generations to the treehouse gang.
"We'd like to know some information about lions. Oh,
well, you came to the right place, didn't you?"
Knowing she wanted a liberal arts education, Kathryn Hahn went to Northwestern University
for her undergraduate degree, according to Northwestern Magazine. During her freshman year,
she met her future husband, Ethan Sandler, who costarred with her in several plays at the school.
After they graduated in 1995, Hahn and Sandler moved to New York City,
and she later entered the MFA program at Yale. As she told CBS Local in 2019, she knew that she
was giving up a few years in which she could be involved in projects, that the MFA program
wasn't a guaranteed career boost, but she just wanted to focus on nothing but her acting.
"But I just was so excited to be able to act. Just like I knew it was gonna
accrue a s---ton of student debt, but I was just so...we're gonna do it anyway. Yeah."
During her years as a struggling actress in New York, Kathryn Hahn worked as a receptionist at the
high-end hair salon Garren New York, waitressed at the Broadway hangout Joe Allen Restaurant,
and even got a Dunkin' Donuts gig handing out bagel sandwiches, according to The New York Times.
"I was the world's worst waitress. Like, I was awful."
Talking to CBS Local, Hahn said the salon job was an "awesome gig," but
she really wanted to act. So she'd scour the casting calls in Backstage magazine.
"We used to laugh about the 'no pay nudity' ads. We were like, 'oh, please!'"
Kathryn Hahn got a big break in 2001 when she was cast as grief
counselor Lily Lebowski in the NBC crime drama Crossing Jordan,
starring opposite Jill Hennessy. She even stayed in the main cast for all six seasons of the show.
Even better, Hahn's husband, Ethan Sandler, played her love interest on Crossing Jordan.
She told PopEntertainmment.com in 2007 that it was a joy for the couple to go to work together,
saying at the time:
"I mean he'd tell you that I am just as bossy on screen as I am off. There's a
lot of eye-rolling going on here by Ethan. It's just like vacation.
I can't believe I can drive in together with him in the morning. It's so fun."
Creator Tim Kring later told Inverse that one of Hahn's action scenes on
Crossing Jordan inspired his next NBC show, the hit drama Heroes. He said:
"I thought, that's a cool idea:
What if super-ordinary people could do something really extraordinary?"
Even before Hahn was working alongside superheroes, she was inspiring them.
Kathryn Hahn and Ethan Sandler eloped on their 10-year anniversary,
according to Northwestern Magazine, and they later
welcomed two children — Leonard and Mae — who sometimes accompany her to red carpet events.
In a 2016 Esquire interview,
Hahn said becoming a parent taught her the capacity of one's heart, saying:
"You can't believe it. I couldn't believe after having my first that I could
ever love anything as much as him. And then when I had my daughter — your heart just
expands. There's so much room in it. It's been a nuts, chaotic mess and I love it."
In fact, it was her daughter, Mae, who inspired Hahn to write a children's book. In 2018, Kathryn
Hahn released My Wish for You: Lessons from My Six-Year-Old Daughter, a Scholastic children's
book. The book — which the publisher calls a "touching meditation on the inherent power every
girl has deep inside herself" — earned praise from Kirkus Reviews and rave reviews from many of
Hahn's famous colleagues, including Joey Soloway, Mila Kunis, Lena Dunham, and Jenni Konner.
In a 2017 roundtable for The Hollywood Reporter,
Kathryn Hahn observed that there was a "best friend chapter" of her career.
"When I felt like I was the constantly, the quirky best friend to like a various...blonde stars."
She backed up Kate Hudson in the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,
Christina Applegate in Anchorman, and Cameron Diaz in The Holiday, for example.
Faced with such typecasting, Hahn commiserated with Judy Greer,
similarly an onscreen "best friend" in films like 13 Going on 30 and 27 Dresses. During the
roundtable, Hahn revealed that she and Greer were often "neck and neck" for BFF parts in movies.
"My husband was like, you guys should do like a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern-type movie,
where it's like the best friends, and every so often, you see Kate Hudson running around behind."
Before writer and producer Joey Soloway added Kathryn Hahn to the casts of TV shows
like Transparent, they spied Hahn's talent in Hung. In that HBO comedy-drama,
Hahn had a three-episode arc as Claire, a pregnant client of Thomas Jane's character.
She clearly made an impression. Soloway told The Wall Street Journal in 2017:
"I thought, 'Who is this person who does not seem
like anybody I've ever seen on TV before?' She just felt so real."
Soloway spotted Hahn days later at a farmers' market in Los Angeles but was too scared to
approach the actress. But when Soloway was casting the 2013 comedy-drama film
Afternoon Delight, everyone told them to cast Hahn in the lead part.
And for her part, Hahn was delighted by the prospect,
especially because it broke her streak of playing supporting friend roles. Hahn told the Journal:
"I had never been asked in my on-camera career to be a lead in anything.
It felt like I literally wasn't complete as a creative bird until she gave me that chance."
In 2014, Kathryn Hahn started playing a rabbi on Transparent,
another one of Joey Soloway's creations, and she earned a Primetime
Emmy Award nomination and a Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for her performance.
Chatting on the podcast Unorthodox in 2015, Hahn admitted that the role
of a rabbi immediately overwhelmed her. As a teen, Kathryn Hahn attended Beaumont School,
an all-girls Catholic high school in Cleveland Heights,
Ohio. But she found inspiration after meeting with the Los Angeles rabbi Susan Goldberg.
In a Marie Claire interview around the same time,
the actress elaborated on her meetings with Goldberg, saying:
"I really have so enjoyed my relationship with her that it's awoken something in me,
that I have the Book of Torah in my own life. I don't know if it's Judaism, but it is something
I've been looking for, just in terms of cracking something open and asking questions again."
Anyone who writes a children's book about the wisdom she learned from her 6-year-old
has to land on the "good moms" list, but Kathryn Hahn nevertheless
enjoyed her scene-stealing role in the 2016 comedy Bad Moms. In the film — also
starring Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell — Hahn plays the unapologetic and frank Carla,
who escapes the rigors of motherhood by throwing back drinks at a bar with her pals.
For the hit film's sequel, 2017's A Bad Moms Christmas, Hahn wrote Susan Sarandon
a letter to convince her to play her character's mother, telling Sarandon that she felt that the
Oscar winner would be the right choice for the film, as Hahn revealed to Rachael Ray in 2017.
"You really care about your kid, don't you? Yeah, it's my... I mean most
people care about their children, mom."
Her days as simply a supporting player are long behind Kathryn Hahn. After adding recurring parts
on Parks and Recreation and Girls to her resume, Hahn headlined or co-headlined the
television series Happyish, I Love Dick, and Mrs. Fletcher between 2015 and 2019.
In Showtime's Happyish, Hahn starred opposite Steve Coogan and played Lee Payne,
an artist, mother, and wife struggling to find work-life balance and fend off
her own intrusive mother. In HBO's Mrs. Fletcher,
she played the title character, a single mother who explores her sexuality after a divorce.
In 2019, Hahn reflected on her roles in a New York Times interview, saying:
"I certainly didn't set out to be the poster person for women's sexuality over 40.
Sexuality is a piece of it. An important and splashy piece,
but not the whole thing. It's the desire and hunger I'm attracted to. A woman who wants."
"Mommy's body of work is not meant for children."
Not only has Kathryn Hahn won fans with her live-action performances,
but she also has a number of voice acting credits to her name, including parts on the
TV shows Bob's Burgers and American Dad and the movie Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.
In 2018, Hahn voiced Olivia "Doc Ock" Octavius, a new version of Spider-Man's
legendary nemesis Doctor Octopus, in the Oscar-winning animated movie Spider-Man:
Into the Spider-Verse, making a foray into the world of Marvel superhero adaptations.
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe continued onto the small screen
with the 2021 miniseries WandaVision, Kathryn Hahn was along for the ride:
She plays Agnes, a "nosy neighbor" to Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff and Paul Bettany's Vision
in those two superheroes' sitcom-inspired suburban reality.
"Wanda...charmed."
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hahn met with Marvel Studios president
Kevin Feige to talk about a possible collaboration shortly before she was
contacted to do WandaVision. And that was a rare event, as Feige explained to the magazine,
since he often doesn't have time for meet-and-greets with prospective colleagues.
Hahn was excited to sign on the dotted line to play Agnes,
a character who turns out to have a significant twist in the show. She said:
"To know that it was going to be something that the MCU has never done before — and
that I was going to enter this world through a 1950s sitcom — all of those reasons together
made it irresistible. I couldn't have dreamt a cooler part, honestly. I was thrilled."
And to think there was a time when Hahn was just a fourth-grade prodigy acting on a children's
show in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio! Yes, Hahn has undergone quite the transformation
over the decades — going from child actor to TV supporting player, to big-screen best friend,
to Emmy nominee who commands top billing — thanks to a lot of hard work on her part.
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