Debra Jo Rupp

Debra Jo Rupp (born February 24, 1951) is an American actress.

Rupp was raised in Boxford, Massachusetts, where she attended Masconomet Regional High School, graduating in 1969.

She has two sisters Robin Lee Rupp and Rebecca Louise Rupp.

Rupp always dreamed of being an actress, but her parents were firmly opposed to the idea.

They sent her to the University of Rochester in New York because it offered no theater classes, but the school added a drama department in Rupp's freshman year.

On campus, she was an active member of Drama House, a small theater club and venue.

After graduating with a B.A. in 1974, she moved to New York to begin her acting career.

Rupp left Massachusetts in 1979 to pursue an acting career in New York City.

She frequently performed on stage and appeared in commercials before winning her first television role in 1980 as Sheila, a topless dancer, on the daytime drama All My Children.

Earlier the same year, Rupp played Helen, the wife of a cheating husband, in Sharon Tipsword's one-act comedy Second Verse, produced as part of a play festival at New York's Nat Horne Theater.

Rupp continued to devote herself to acting full-time through the 1980s, and performed in numerous regional stage productions.

Another notable stage performance was as the young bride Eleanor in the 1985 production of A. R. Gurney's The Middle Ages at the Whole Theater Company, established by Olympia Dukakis in Montclair, New Jersey.

She garnered praise from Walter Goodman in a New York Times review of one of her many off-Broadway performances: as June Yeager, a young wife who feels she is never "loved enough", in the 1986 York Theater Company production of Arthur Laurents' dramatic play, The Time of the Cuckoo staged at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York City's Upper East Side.

Rupp's list of stage credits includes appearances in Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune and Cynthia Heimel's A Girl's Guide to Chaos, the Broadway role which propelled her career forward.

She originated the role of Cynthia in 1986, a character based on Heimel's observations made during her stints as a columnist for Playboy and The Village Voice.

Directed by Wynn Handman, and sharing the stage with Rita Jenrette, Rupp's performance as Cynthia was immortalized by legendary caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and described in a New York Times review as "an appealing mixture of pluck and pathos".

In his review of Chaos, New York Newsday theater critic Allan Wallach called Rupp "a real find".

In early 1987, Rupp was featured in an article written by Enid Nemy for the "Broadway" section of The New York Times.

Entitled "New York is beckoning, but first, Los Angeles", the interview revealed how Rupp's success in the theater so soon after her arrival in New York City had scared the young actress enough to take time off from acting for several years.

After returning to the stage, Rupp explained, she was often cast as an ingénue, but after her portrayal of Cynthia in Chaos, she began getting calls to audition in Los Angeles for "really crazy neurotic" parts in television pilots.

She was realistic about the unpredictability of an acting career, and since she had promised her mother she would never wait tables when she left for New York, she had not given up her part-time work as a bookkeeper and was "learning computers" as something to fall back on.

Rupp appeared in the comedy films Big (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992), Sgt. Bilko (1996), Garfield: The Movie (2004), and She's Out of My League (2010).

One such production was Sherry Kramer's Wall of Water in New Haven, Connecticut, at the Yale Repertory Theatre's Winterfest play festival of 1988.

She guest-starred on numerous television shows, including Kate & Allie, Spenser for Hire, and The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd.

In 1988, Rupp landed her first feature-film role as Miss Patterson, the timid secretary of Tom Hanks' Josh Baskin, in the comedy Big.

In 1990, Rupp returned to New York City to perform in a Broadway stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with Kathleen Turner at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre.

In it, Rupp portrayed Mae (Sister Woman).

Her television work during the early 1990s included recurring roles as Ms. Higgins on the television series Davis Rules with Randy Quaid, and as Sister Mary Incarnata on Phenom with Judith Light, as well as guest roles on Blossom, Family Matters, L.A. Law, and ER.

In 1995, she began her stint as Jeff Foxworthy's sister-in-law Gayle on The Jeff Foxworthy Show, appeared in the science fiction miniseries The Invaders with Scott Bakula, portrayed Jerry Seinfeld's eccentric booking agent Katie on an episode of Seinfeld (a role she reprised in 1996), and performed on stage as Meg in Broken Bones, a dark drama about spousal abuse by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, as part of a one-act play festival at Hollywood's Met Theater.

Rupp also had roles in the NBC sitcom Friends (1997–1998), the ABC animated series Teacher's Pet (2000–2002) and its 2004 sequel film, the ABC sitcom Better with You (2010–2011), and the Disney+ miniseries WandaVision (2021).

She provided the voice of Lana Lionheart in the "MGM Sing-Alongs" Videos in 1997.

Also in 1997, Rupp appeared as the office manager in the 1997 independent film Clockwatchers, co-starring Lisa Kudrow, Parker Posey, and Toni Colette.

Rupp appeared in several episodes of Friends as Alice Knight, a home economics teacher who fell in love with and married Phoebe Buffay's (Lisa Kudrow) much younger half-brother, Frank Jr. (Giovanni Ribisi).

She is best known for her starring role as Kitty Forman in the Fox sitcom That '70s Show (1998–2006) and its Netflix sequel series That '90s Show (2023–present).

In 1998, she began portraying Kitty Forman in the comedy series, That '70s Show.

She also portrayed Marilyn See, wife of astronaut Elliot See, in episode 11 of the Emmy Award-winning television miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, produced by Tom Hanks and directed by Sally Field.

She lent her voice as the character of Mrs. Helperman in Disney's animated series Teacher's Pet in 2000, and again for the 2004 movie version.

She starred as a stand-up comic with a secret in the independent short film The Act, directed by Susan Kraker and Pi Ware, an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival which won several awards at film festivals around the world.

She also starred as sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer in the plays Dr. Ruth, All the Way (2012) and Becoming Dr. Ruth (2013), the latter of which earned her a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance.

She starred as Della in the play The Cake (2017–2019), for which she was nominated for the Drama League Award for Distinguished Performance.