Teri Lynn Hatcher (born December 8, 1964) is an Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actress and author.

She’s 43!

She gained attention for her role as Lois Lane in the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, with Dean Cain as Superman/Clark Kent.

Hatcher is also well-known for portraying Susan Mayer, in Desperate Housewives, an accident-prone divorcee. She is also a “Bond Girl”, having played Paris Carver in Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997.

Hatcher was born in Palo Alto, California, the daughter of a computer programmer who worked for Lockheed Martin, and Owen W. Hatcher, a nuclear physicist and electrical engineer. Hatcher’s father was of Welsh and distant Choctaw Native American descent, and her mother had French, German, and Syrian ancestry. Hatcher grew up in Sunnyvale, California. An only child, she attended Mango Junior High (now Sunnyvale Middle School), Fremont High School in Sunnyvale and De Anza College in Cupertino.

In March 2006, Hatcher revealed to Vanity Fair that she was sexually abused from the age of five by Richard Hayes Stone, an uncle by marriage who was later divorced by Hatcher’s aunt. Her parents, she said, were unaware of the abuse at the time. In 2002, she assisted Santa Clara County prosecutors in indicting Stone for a more recent molestation that led his female victim to commit suicide at the age of fourteen. Stone pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In an interview appearing in Vanity Fair, Hatcher said she told the prosecutors about her own abuse because she was haunted by thoughts of the 14-year-old girl who shot herself, and feared Stone might escape conviction.

Hatcher began her performing career as a young girl taking ballet lessons at the San Juan Girls’ Ballet Studio in downtown Los Altos, California. She later studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater. One of her early jobs (in 1984) was as a cheerleader with the San Francisco 49ers. During this time, she also appeared as one of the mermaids on the show The Love Boat in its final season.

Hatcher with her Lois & Clark co-star Dean Cain rehearsing for the 45th Emmy Awards, September 19, 1993, Hatcher landed a co-starring role in 1993, opposite Dean Cain in Lois and Clark. Her role proved to be the best move to gain the attention of audiences, and the one role she had most fallen in love with. While probably most noted for playing what is widely regarded as the best Lois Lane portrayal to date in the TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-1997), Hatcher has also appeared in such feature films as Spy Kids (2001), the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, Dead in the Water (1991), 2 Days in the Valley (1996), The Cool Surface (1994) and Heaven’s Prisoners (1996). The last two films featured Hatcher’s only on-screen nude scenes, but neither did well at the box office. ABC had cancelled Lois & Clark in 1997, and Hatcher was very disappointed about the show’s demise. She was also desperate in looking for work.

Hatcher beat out four other actresses for the lead role on ABC’s Desperate Housewives, on which she stars as single mother Susan Mayer, a role for which she won the Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Golden Globe Award in January 2005.

As of April 2006, Hatcher is one of the highest paid television actresses in the United States. She reportedly earns $285,000 per episode of Desperate Housewives. In May 2006, she released her first book, Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life. In conjunction with the book, she has also launched a line of apparel and merchandise. Furthermore she is prominently featured in an international campaign for Repeat Cashmere.

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