Suzanne Cryer

A poised, appealing actress quick with an equally convincing bright smile or deadly stare, Suzanne Cryer was a versatile and talented performer who reached her widest audience on the silly ABC sitcom "Two Guys and a Girl" (1997-2001). With undergraduate literature and graduate drama degrees from Yale to her credit, Cryer worked steadily on stage as well as in film and on television, going from regional productions in Maryland and Utah to Los Angeles stages to Broadway. Among Cryer's earliest credits was a guest role on a 1992 episode of the NBC drama "Law & Order." Busy with other projects, she didn't turn up on television again for three years, returning on an episode of the CBS series "New York News" in 1995. The following year she was featured in the "Someone Had to Be Benny" installment of the HBO TV-movie series "Lifestories: Families in Crisis" and guested on the sitcom "Caroline in the City" (NBC). On that network, Cryer would become something of a pop culture icon, playing the very succinct Marcy, who introduces the phrase "yada, yada" to the world of "Seinfeld" in 1997. In 1998 she rose to the challenge of an improvisational scene with Bill Cosby on his CBS sitcom "Cosby," with the pair's resulting work broadcast as part of the finished episode. A 1998-1999 recurring role as the domineering girlfriend of Berg (Ryan Reynolds) on "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place" turned into a regular role as Berg's acerbic ex on "Two Guys and a Girl" beginning in the fall of 1999. Cryer's portrayal of the young doctor evinced both the character's invincible facade and her romantic heart, with a dose of inane humor thrown in for good measure.

While television allowed the actress to reach her widest audience, her film and theater work was at least as notable. Cryer made her debut in 1994's "Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade," the short by Billy Bob Thornton that would be adapted into the actor-director's acclaimed 1996 feature "Sling Blade." In 1997, with several regional productions to her credit, Cryer was featured in Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. She played Josie Hines, one of the stars of Neil Simon's "Proposals" in the play's 1997 Los Angeles theater debut, and made a debut of her own when the production ran on Broadway from 1997-1998. Cryer was heralded for her performance in the moving drama "Collected Stories" for the South Coast Repertory in 1997, the same year she was featured on the big screen in Barry Levinson's political satire "Wag the Dog" as well as the independent drama "Wilbur Falls." A role in the Academy Award-winning short "My Mother Dreams the Satan Disciples of New York" (1998) underlined the actress' zany comedic sensibility, while her role as a pregnant and unwed young woman in the 1999 ensemble comedy "Friends and Lovers" again displayed her talent for showing the vulnerability behind a strong-willed character she has used to good effect in "Two Guys and a Girl."