Scott Thompson

Perhaps the member of the Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall most identified with specific characters, the tall, blond and handsome Scott Thompson was actually the last to join the group. He had seen the other members perform at a Toronto club and invited them to see an act he was performing with another group. The Kids--Mark McKinney, Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch and Kevin McDonald--saw Thompson's act and were impressed enough to ask him to join them.

Soon thereafter, Lorne Michaels, a Toronto native and creator of "Saturday Night Live," saw the Kids in performance and subsequently produced their TV show, which ran first in Canada and then in the USA on CBS, HBO and Comedy Central. A combination of zany, ribald sketches, surreal routines and musings on life complete with obscure pop references, "The Kids in the Hall" allowed each member a moment to shine. Each often played female characters, not so much as for the drag gag (as in "Monty Python's Flying Circus"), but rather as full-blown characters. The openly gay Thompson excelled in these sequences, whether as Queen Elizabeth II or a buxom, clumsy German model. He was comically poignant as the musing yet edgy club owner Buddy Cole and was also seen as movie vamp Francesca Fiori, long-suffering housewife Fran Wilson, and a very straight executive, Danny Husk.

As the group began to disband, Thompson branched out. He appeared in a cameo in the gay-themed "Super 8 1/2" and "It Runs in My Family" (both 1994). The following year, he hosted "Out There in Hollywood," a Comedy Central special featuring gay and lesbian comics. That same year he joined Garry Shandling's HBO sitcom "The Larry Sanders Show" in the role of a TV production assistant.

In the 1996 release, "The Kids in the Hall BRAIN CANDY," Thompson played nine characters. The production was troubled and the film not a great success. He rebounded with a deliciously wicked turn as an over-bearing film production assistant in the indie "Hijacking Hollywood" (1997). The performer has devoted much of his spare time to his Web site, "ScottLand," located at www.scottland.com.