Melissa McCarthy

Melissa McCarthy (birthname: Melissa Ann McCarthy) has rocketed to the top of big-screen comedy actors and expanded her portfolio as an active producer and writer. From 1999 to 2007, McCarthy played small supporting roles in a string of primarily studio-produced movies, starting with such projects as the Doug Liman-directed crime comedy, Go (1999); Sony’s hit reboot of Charlie’s Angels (2000); and the Bruce Willis-starring fantasy-comedy Disney’s The Kid (2000).

McCarthy’s first co-starring feature role was in the mockumentary, Cook-Off (2007, but shelved until its ultimate 2017 release), and in the same year, McCarthy co-starred opposite Ryan Gosling and Hope Davis in the little-seen anthology sci-fi drama, The Nines (2007), with Elle Fanning and Octavia Spencer. Another starring role for McCarthy in a little-seen movie was Pretty Ugly People (2008), with Missi Pyle, Jack Noseworthy, Spencer, and Allison Janney, followed by McCarthy’s supporting roles in a pair of rom-coms, the Jennifer Lopez-starring The Back-up Plan (2010) and Warner Bros.’ hit starring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel, Life as We Know It (2010).

Melissa McCarthy’s breakthrough performance arrived, loudly, in the Judd Apatow-produced runaway hit comedy, Bridesmaids (2011), directed by Paul Feig and co-written by Annie Mumolo, and Kristen Wiig, and co-starring Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Ellie Kemper, and Chris O’Dowd, and grossing $306 million, culminating with McCarthy earning her first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress (as well as nods from the Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA, People’s Choice Awards, MTV Movie + TV Awards, and Critics’ Choice Awards).

Seldom had one movie fundamentally shifted an actor’s trajectory like this one, though McCarthy’s subsequent credit with writer-producer-director Apatow was a mere supporting role in This is 40 (2012). Starting with the smash-hit road comedy, Identity Thief (2013), McCarthy was a lead star, in this case with Jason Bateman (who also produced). Her star status solidified when Melissa McCarthy co-starred with Sandra Bullock in the female cop comedy, The Heat (2013), another big-grosser ($230 million) directed by Feig.

McCarthy’s first feature as star-writer-producer was the commercially successful ($100 million) Tammy (2014), directed by comic-husband Ben Falcone and with Susan Sarandon, Allison Janney, Gary Cole, Dan Aykroyd, and Kathy Bates. McCarthy displayed a more nuanced profile in writer-director Theodore Melfi’s comedy-drama, St. Vincent (2014), with Bill Murray, Naomi Watts, Chris O’Dowd, and Terrence Howard. McCarthy’s next lauded commercial hit with writer-producer-director Feig was Spy (2015), with Jason Statham, Rose Byrne, and Jude Law, earning a Golden Globe acting nomination for McCarthy. The next Melissa McCarthy project as star/co-writer/producer with husband (director/co-writer/producer) Ben Falcone was yet another hit, The Boss (2016), with Kristen Bell, Bates, and Peter Dinklage.

For the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters (2016), again with writer-director Paul Feig, Melissa McCarthy led an ensemble with Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Charles Dance, Michael K. Williams, and Chris Hemsworth, grossing a somewhat mild $229 million. Between 2018 and 2021, McCarthy amped up her role as producer on several movies, starting with Life of the Party (2018), co-written with director Ben Falcone, with Gillian Jacobs, Maya Rudolph, Julie Bowen, Matt Walsh, Molly Gordon, Stephen Root, and Jacki Weaver.

McCarthy’s first box-office failure was the critically panned The Happytime Murders (2018), in which the star-producer performed alongside the Muppets in a movie skewing adult. In a dramatic departure from her usual material, Melissa McCarthy took on the complex role of epistolary forger Lee Israel in Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018), based on Israel’s confessional memoir, directed by Marielle Heller, and co-starring Richard E. Grant—with both McCarthy and Grant nabbing Oscar nominations (McCarthy’s second Oscar nomination) for their roles.

Unfortunately, McCarthy experienced a third-in-a-row box-office failure with writer-director Andrea Berloff’s crime drama, The Kitchen (2019), with McCarthy co-starring with Tiffany Haddish and Elisabeth Moss, with Margo Martindale, Common, and Bill Camp. After her first feature (in which she starred and produced) with director-husband Falcone to be released on streaming (2020’s Superintelligence), McCarthy proceeded with a second with Falcone on streaming, the superhero comedy, Thunder Force (2021), co-starring Octavia Spencer, with Bobby Cannavale, Melissa Leo, and Jason Bateman.

McCarthy reunited with director-producer Theodore Melfi for the widely criticized fantasy dramedy, The Starling (2021), with Chris O’Dowd, Timothy Olyphant, Daveed Diggs, Loretta Devine, and Kevin Kline, and screening only a week in theaters before landing on Netflix. After a cameo in Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), McCarthy was cast in the plum role of Ursula in Rob Marshall’s hit live-action version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid (2023), with Halle Bailey, Jonah Hauer-King, Diggs, Awkwafina, and Javier Bardem. McCarthy’s next feature projects bypassed theatrical for streaming: the Richard Curtis-written Christmas fantasy, Bernard and the Genie (date to be announced) for Peacock, and Jerry Seinfeld’s comic history of the creation of the Pop-Tart titled Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story (2023) for Netflix.