Lisa Stemple / Anne Ramsay
Jamie's
unmarried older sister by 3 years, who spent 5 years in high
school and is a college dropout. A character with decidedly odd
logic, Lisa is able to handle her parents in a manner Jamie is
not.
With a semi-permanent eating disorder and on Prozac, Lisa is under a therapist's care, who features her in a book under the pseudonym Edna. Among her friends in group therapy are two bulimics named Harriet and a man named Gunther. Jamie has tried to fix her up from time to time and can monitor her telepathically, while Lisa goes through a string of boyfriends; sometimes they are gay, and usually married if straight. Things changed dramatically for Lisa in season #4 after finding steady employment at Klarik's and being groomed for she knows not what by her employer. She ended up engaged to the heir to the Klarik fortune, Sanford, though that is now presumably off.
In the old days, Lisa used to do her laundry on Tuesdays at the Buchmans', where her entrances are preceded by full use (or abuse) of their buzzer, seemingly in Morse code. She also constantly raided their fridge. We do not know where she lives, but it is in the vicinity of the 103rd Street subway station, and her fifth floor apartment, #5-G. Her purse is a world to itself and figured prominently in the seventh episode of the third season; 7 kinds of pills can be found in there.
Anne
Ramsay - Before she was widely known for her own work as an
actress, Anne Ramsay had to include her middle name -- Elizabeth
-- to distinguish herself from the late Oscar winner Anne Ramsay,
who played the irksome mother in the feature film "Throw
Momma from the Train." Before signing on as a luckless
single woman in "Mad About You"
the younger Ramsay did her own throwing in the hit feature "A League of Their Own," playing a
first-baseman on an all-female baseball team in the 1940s.
"I was a tomboy as a kid, and that made me perfect for the
role," says Ramsay, who broke her nose during the
rough-and-tumble filming.
Born and raised in Southern California, Ramsay was inspired as a child by Barbra Streisand's performance in the feature "Funny Girl." She eventually graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in theatre. She notched her first professional role in an industrial film and worked in the Continuum, an acting group of UCLA alumni whose 1987 production of "Waiting" (which she co-wrote) won them acclaim and landed her an agent.
Ramsay guest-starred on "A Year in the Life," "Booker," "Wolf," "Hunter," "Duet" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation," among other series. She was a series regular as a nutty psychiatrist on "Doctor, Doctor." In addition to "A League of Their Own," her feature films include "Class Action" (with Gene Hackman), "Critters 4," "The Taste of Hemlock," "Unfinished Business," "Perfect Alibi" (with Teri Garr) and "Final Cut." She also co-starred in "Murder of Innocence," a TV movie starring Valerie Bertinelli.
Although her character, Lisa, is still evolving, Ramsay sizes her up this way: "I love playing characters who seem to be on top of it but are not. She's very artsy, dresses in funky clothes and thinks she's independent -- but really is very dependent, especially on her sister." Ever athletic, Ramsay enjoys jogging and playing beach volleyball, but she admits to a weakness for Nintendo games. Anne Ramsay's birthday is September 1.
KAYPEE
LAST EDITED 19/09/97
