Camryn Manheim
(March 8, 1961 - living) U.S.A.
Actress
Born Deborah Frances Manheim in New Jersey, Camyrn, as she later decided to be known, moved with her family to Long Beach when she was 11. After graduating from Wilson High, she enrolled at UC Santa Cruz. while studying there, she met some jugglers at a Renaissance Faire about Santa Cruz, and determined to become an actress.
Manheim went on to a successful career on screens both large and small. Though she's appeared in a number of motion pictures, including The Road to Wellville and Bonfire of the Vanities, she's best known for her Emmy-winning role as Ellenor Frutt in ABC's The Practice, winning a 1998 Emmy and a 1999 Golden Globe for her role.
At her Emmy win, she lifted her award high and proudly declared on the televised ceremony, "This is for all the fat girls!"; in her 1999 autobiography Wake Up, I'm Fat, she candidly writes on her student protest days:
"Amid all those wonderful dykes, I had had a revelation. I was not a lesbian. I wanted to be a lesbian. I tried to be a lesbian, and God knows I would have been a great fucking lesbian. I mean, after all, I lived in Santa Cruz, I had a motorcycle, I was an activist, a liberal, an artist, a feminist, I love women, they love me, fat and all, and my sister always said I would be one. I even gave it the good old college try. Not once, but twice. ... but no, I had to settle for heterosexuality..."
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