Comedy legend Julie Kavner is most well known as the voice of Marge Simpson on FOX’s multi-award-winning [Emmy®, Critics Choice, Image, Kids Choice, Peabody, People’s Choice, etc.] hit animated series The Simpsons, created by Matt Groening and James L. Brooks. In 1992, she received a Primetime Emmy Award® for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for her work on the popular program.

For 36 years, Kavner has entertained audiences as the raspy-voiced, strong-willed matriarch, as well as voicing Marge’s sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier, their mother Jacqueline, Great-Aunt Gladys, and an unnamed grandmother, along with most of the other female Bouvier family members. As Marge, Kavner has also made an appearance in a special Simpsons episode of Family Guy and can be heard in a variety of Simpsons video games as well as on The Simpsons Ride at both the Hollywood and Orlando Universal Studios theme parks.

Kavner has also starred in The Simpsons Movie, for which she was nominated for Best Voice Acting in an Animated Feature at the 2007 Annie Awards, and in the short films May the 12th Be with You and The Simpsons Meet the Bocellis in Feliz Navidad.

Kavner originated the Marge character (opposite Dan Castellaneta as Homer) for a series of animated shorts featuring the Simpson family while working on another hit television program, The Tracey Ullman Show. Kavner received four Emmy® nominations and an American Comedy Award for her work on the Emmy Award®-winning series that ran from 1987 to 1990. Other

series work includes a recurring special guest role on Tracey Takes On as well as appearances on Birdland; To the Moon, Alice; Sibs; and Taxi. She also co-starred in the telefilms Jake’s Women with Alan Alda and Anne Archer, written by Neil Simon; Don’t Drink the Water, written, directed and starring Woody Allen; A Fine Romance, opposite Leo Burmester and Jeffrey Jones; Revenge of the Stepford Wives with Sharon Gless; No Other Love with Richard Thomas; Katherine with Sissy Spacek; and lent her voice to the family drama Barn Red, starring the late-Ernest Borgnine.

Kavner received an Emmy® nomination for her starring role in the daytime special The Girl Who Couldn’t Lose in 1975.

The actress landed her first professional role in 1974 as the subtlety hilarious Brenda Morgenstern on the popular sitcom Rhoda. Hired by showrunners James L. Brooks and his then-partner, producer David Davis, the series was a spinoff of the ground-breaking The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Kavner won a 1987 Primetime Emmy Award® for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, along with three additional Emmy® nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations for her work on the series. But Kavner’s most significant prize from her years on the broadcast was meeting and eventually marrying Davis, the love of her life.

On the big screen, Kavner co-starred in several Woody Allen movies, including Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, New York Stories (for which she won another American Comedy Award), Alice, Shadows and Fog and Deconstructing Harry. 

Kavner took on her first leading role in a feature film in Nora Ephron’s poignant family drama This Is My Life, co-starring Samantha Mathis and Gaby Hoffmann, in which she played Dottie Ingels, an aspiring stand-up comedian who must juggle family life with a burgeoning career.

Her other feature films include Click, starring Adam Sandler and Kate Beckinsale; Story of a Bad Boy with Stephen Lang; Tony Goldwyn’s A Walk on the Moon, starring Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen and Liev Schreiber; Judy Berlin, written and directed by Eric Mendelsohn and starring Edie Falco; Billy Crystal’s Forget Paris, with Crystal and Debra Winger; James L. Brooks’ I’ll Do Anything, co-starring Nick Nolte and Albert Brooks; the Academy Award®-nominated Awakenings, with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams, written by Steven Zaillian and directed by Penny Marshall; Surrender with Sally Field and Michael Caine; Bad Medicine, starring Steve Guttenberg and Alan Arkin; and National Lampoon’s Movie Madness, starring Peter Riegert and Diane Lane. She has also lent her voice to Disney’s The Lion King 1½, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick; and Betty Thomas’ 1998 remake of Dr. Dolittle, starring Eddie Murphy.

Most recently, Kavner reunited with Brooks on his upcoming comedy Ella McCay for Disney / Twentieth Century Studios. The ensemble cast includes Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson, Albert Brooks, Spike Fearn, Ayo Edebiri, Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani and Rebecca Hall.

On stage, Kavner performed on Broadway in Relatively Speaking, an anthology of three plays: Talking Cure written by Ethan Coen, George Is Dead by Elaine May, and Honeymoon Motel, written by Woody Allen, in which Kavner starred with Mark Lin-Baker. John Turturro directed all three comedies at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. Off-Broadway she appeared in The Mineola Twins, written by Paula Vogel, starring Swoosie Kurtz and directed by Joe Mantello. The play was produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre. She also starred opposite Luke Reilly in the off-Broadway production of Particular Friendships at The Astor Place Theatre. In 1997, she starred in God’s Heart with Viola Davis and Amy Brenneman at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. In addition, Kavner headlined a dinner theatre run of It Had to Be You, written by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna where she appeared opposite Ray Buktenica in Edmonton, Alberta and then opposite Leo Burmester in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Early in her career Kavner starred with Martin Sheen in Two for the Seesaw, directed by Burt Reynolds for the Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theatre in Florida.

A native of Los Angeles, Kavner studied Theatre Arts and graduated with honors from San Diego State University.