Melanie Chartoff (born December 15, 1948 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an actress best known for her voice role in Rugrats, and for her comedic work on the ABC series Fridays from 1980-1982, and on the early '90s Fox sitcom Parker Lewis Can't Lose. December 15 is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1948 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... City nickname: The Elm City Location in the state of Connecticut Founded April 24, 1638 County New Haven County Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. ... The whole Rugrats gang as of 2001. ... The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is a television and radio network in the United States. ... This article is about the television program Fridays. ... 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... 1982 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Parker Lewis Cant Lose is an early 1990s television comedy series that was strongly influenced by the film, Ferris Buellers Day Off. ...

Ms. Chartoff's first TV role came in 1976 when she played a nurse on Search For Tomorrow, after which came an appearance in the 1978 motion picture American Hot Wax. Search for Tomorrow was a soap opera which aired on the CBS television network from September 3, 1951 to March 26, 1982. ...

Ms. Chartoff first became a nationally known figure on ABC's Fridays; that network's attempt to create its own version of Saturday Night Live. She immediately stood out on the series; partly thanks to her regular role as the anchor on the show's fake newscasts, but also due to her comedic skills (particularly a devastating impression of Nancy Reagan) and her astonishing good looks. Saturday Night Live (SNL) is a weekly late-night 90-minute comedy-variety show from NBC which has been broadcast virtually every Saturday night since its debut on October 11, 1975. ... White House portrait Nancy Davis Reagan (born July 6, 1921) is the widow of President Ronald Reagan and was First Lady of the United States from 1981 to 1989. ...

Between the demise of Fridays in 1982 and her return to a regular series in 1990 with Parker Lewis Can't Lose (in which she co-starred for three seasons as the high-strung Principal Grace Musso), Ms. Chartoff continued to work steadily on television throughout the '80s, including appearances on Mr. Belvedere, Wiseguy, and St. Elsewhere, as well as a recurring role on Newhart as Dr. Mary Kizer. In addition, she made two appearances on Seinfeld, including one in the 1998 series finale in which four of her former Fridays co-stars were also involved, making it the closest thing to a Fridays cast reunion to date. Mr. ... Wiseguy (1987-1990) was a U.S. television program about Vincent Vinnie Terranova, an undercover agent of the OCB (Organized Crime Bureau), a fictional division of the FBI. Produced by Stephen J. Cannell, the show differed from previous crime dramas in its use of Arcs (the telling of a single... St. ... Newhart is the name of a television situation comedy that aired on the CBS network from 1982 to 1990. ... Seinfeld is a television sitcom, considered to be one of the most popular and influential of the 1990s in the U.S., to the point where it is often cited as epitomizing the self-obsessed and ironic culture of the decade. ... 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...

In recent years she has become best known for her voice work on the cartoon series Rugrats. Ms. Chartoff's Rugrats characters include Didi Pickles - mother of Tommy and Dil Pickles - and her mother, Minka (like Didi and Minka, Ms. Chartoff is Jewish). She continues to voice Didi on Rugrats' successor series, All Grown Up!. As of 2005 she was also working on Fox's Saturday morning cartoon Bratz. All Grown Up! is an animated television series. ... Bratz is the name of a line of dolls produced by MGA Entertainment at the end of 2001. ...

In 1991 Ms. Chartoff helped to invent and patent the Grayway Rotating Drain; a graywater recycling device for domestic use. She was recently recognized as one of the 50 most beautiful female inventors of all time by Inventors Weekly magazine. She also appeared in the October 1981 issue of Playboy magazine as the "Breast of The Month". Greywater is water generated by household processes such as washing dishes, laundry and bathing. ... Classic Playboy logo. ...

Currently Melanie Chartoff continues her work as an in-demand voice actress, and also takes occasional TV and stage roles. In addition, she works as an acting coach. In 2005 she interviewed fellow one-time late-nite comedienne Laraine Newman (who had also appeared in American Hot Wax and Rugrats - Ms. Newman has joked that she and Ms. Chartoff frequently compete for the same roles) for Autograph Collector magazine. Laraine Newman (born March 2, 1952) is an American comedian and actress, from Los Angeles, California. ...

Melanie Chartoff is currently (as of mid-2005) unmarried.

External links

• Melanie Chartoff's web site