Born in Palo Alto as the only child of a computer programmer mother and a nuclear physicist/electrical engineer father, Teri grew up in Sunnyvale, California.
“Since my parents both worked, they hired me when I was 11 to make dinner every night,” she said in a 2004 Good Housekeeping article. “I got a quarter a day. But I was always making things like duke a l'orange and baked Alaska. I was a little bit nutty.”
As a high school student Teri was captain of the cheerleader dance team and was voted “Most Likely to Become a Solid Gold Dancer.” Inheriting her smarts from her parents, Teri attended De Anza College in Cupertino, studying math and engineering. At age 19 she became a member of the Gold Rush, the cheerleader squad for the San Francisco 49ers.
A year later Teri went to Hollywood to lend moral support for a friend who was auditioning for a role in “The Love Boat,” but it was Teri who landed the part as Amy, one of the singing and dancing “Mermaid” girls.
Classic TV Beauties 1990s Countdown
TERI HATCHER as Lois Lane in "The New Adventures of Superman"
Before she was a desperate housewife, the brunette beauty with big brown eyes became the wife of Superman in this off-beat TV version of the comic book classic.
Airing from 1993-97, “Lois & Clark” veered from the traditional Superman shows and movies. The series focused more on the personal lives of the characters than on the Man of Steel's exploits. This was the first TV or film series which showed the couple romantically in love.
Although Lois was often put in damsel-in-distress situations, such as being kindapped, Teri's Lois was an independent 90s woman.
The website www.digitalspy.com said Teri gave a “spirited, spunky performance that launches her to international stardom,” and it called “Lois & Clark” a romantic comedy comparing it to “Moonlighting.”
“The comic book trappings were just a framework for the romantic tension between the two leads, their barbs and banter frequently accompanied on the soundtrack of some jazzy piano tinkling.”
Like other TV series before it, the show lost its edge once the sexual tension between the two main characters was released. Ratings dropped after Kent and Lois married. The fourth season finale ended with Lois and Clark finding a baby in Clark's old bassinet.
Away from the show, Teri had fun with the Lois' inability to recognize that the bespectacled Clark Kent was the same person as Superman. On a “Saturday Night Live” appearance she acted in a skit where she pretended not to recognize SNL cast members when they wore glasses.
A decade before “Housewives” and back during the early days of the Internet, Teri became the first female to earn the title of “most downloaded woman on the internet,” thanks to a photo of her wearing only Superman's cape.
.No. 3
Teri appeared in seven episodes of “MacGyver” in the late 1980s, and for several years guest-starred in TV shows such as “Night Court,” “L.A. Law,” “Murphy Brown” and “Quantum Leap.”
Teri gained a measure of notoriety playing Jerry's girlfriend Sidra Holland in a 1993 “Seinfeld” episode. The storyline centered on whether her character had breast implants. Her parting shot to Seinfeld became a classic line in TV history: “Oh, by the way, they're real... and they're spectacular.” Teri ad-libbed the “...and they're spectacular” line.
Later in the year, after she won the role of Lois Lane, Teri remarked, “Despite the fact that I have a good-sized pair of breasts...in 'Lois & Clark' I have the opportunity to show the world they're not my only attribute.”
Teri starred in the 1997 James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies,” playing Paris Carver, a former Bond girl friend married to the wife of Bond's main antagonist. She later complained that she regretted making the film. “It's such an artificial kind of character to be playing that you don't get any special satisfaction from it.”
Until she landed the role of Susan Delfino Mayer in 2004, Teri's career had bottomed out in the early 2000s.
“I had to test, the whole rigmarole,” Teri said of auditioning for “Housewives.” “But it was one of the greatest auditions I ever had. I left the building knowing I had this.”
The role was originally written for Mary-Louise Parker, who turned it down, saying that she didn't feel she could serve the role as well as someone else.
.“That glamour girl, the bombshell thing, that was acting,” she told Good Housekeeping. “And, like Susan, I'm insecure about men and haven't been too terribly successful in that area of my life.”
Marc Cherry, the creator of Desperate Housewives and the show's executive producer, was surprised by the parallels between Teri and Susan.
"I saw the character of Susan as someone who is attractive but still a mess of neuroses and insecurities," he told Good Housekeeping. "And Teri completely identified with that; she's been there. At some point, Teri sat me down and said, 'This character, this is me.' She's had stuff going on inside that you couldn't possibly have guessed at, until now."
"Before I started on the show, I did have some preconceived ideas about Teri," said costar James Denton, who played Mike, Susan's on-again, off-again lover. "I just thought she was too attractive to be the everywoman you pulled for. I wondered if she was vulnerable enough and down-to-earth enough.
“But now, knowing her as I do, I've seen that she does have this real-life vulnerability and warmth that makes you feel for her. She has this likability that makes her so endearing."
Teri was nominated for an Emmy and won a Golden Globe in 2005 for her portrayal of Susan. She also won two Screen Actors Guilds awards in 2004.
“Desperate Housewives” rated in the Top 4 its first two seasons and was a Top 12 show the following three seasons. “Housewives” won six Emmys, two Golden Globes and two SAG awards its first season.
Teri's stunning looks kept her on several “beautiful people” lists during this time. People magazine tabbed her one of its 50 Most Beautiful People in 2005, and she checked in at No. 38 in Men's Health magazine's list of “100 Hottest Women of All Time.” FHM listed her in the Top 10 on its “100 Sexiest Women in the World” in 2005 and 2006.
By guest-starring as Ella Lane in an episode of “Smallville,” a 21st century TV series based on the Superman comic strip, Teri played Lois's mother and became the only woman to appear in both “Lois & Clark” and in “Smallville.”
Note to our Readers: Most of the pages of the 1990 Classic TV Beauties are not ready for the website. Check back next month.
“I don't think they were hot to hire me for Susan,” Teri said. “I was maybe on a B-list, certainly not an A-list.”
When she won a Golden Globe in 2005, she thanked ABC for giving her a chance “when I couldn't have been a bigger has-been.”
Susan was a vulnerable, insecure girl next door, a hopeless romantic who wed three times during the eight-year run of the show.
In 2006 Teri revealed to Vanity Fair that she was sexually abused by an uncle by marriage when she was a young girl. She penned a book, “Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life” as a metaphor for women who often blame themselves for problems.
“My purpose in writing the book was to try to help stop the pattern in women to take less than what they deserve, and to help stop the burnt-toast syndrome for their girls,” she said. “Women walk around feeling like everything is their fault...I want to start treating myself better, and I want you to start treating yourself better, too.”
