Tracey Ullman (born Trace Ullman; 30 December 1959) is a British and American actress, comedian, singer, dancer, screenwriter, producer, director, and author. Critics have lauded her ability to shift seamlessly between characters and accents, with many dubbing her the "female Peter Sellers".
Ullman began her career as a dramatic actress on stage, as well as in the British soap opera Mackenzie, playing Lisa Mackenzie. After an award-winning performance in the improvised play Four in a Million at the Royal Court Theatre, she branched out into comedy. She starred in the British television sketch comedies A Kick Up the Eighties (with Rik Mayall and Miriam Margolyes) and Three of a Kind (with Lenny Henry and David Copperfield), the latter winning her a BAFTA in 1984. After a brief singing career that garnered three top-ten singles, she appeared as Candice Valentine in the ITV sitcom Girls on Top alongside Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, and Ruby Wax.
Ullman emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States, where she starred in her own network television comedy series, The Tracey Ullman Show, from 1987 to 1990. The series famously featured the first appearances of the long-running animated media franchise The Simpsons. She later produced programmes for HBO, including Tracey Takes On... (1996–1999), garnering numerous awards and critical acclaim. She has appeared in several feature films, including Plenty (1985), which earned her a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination.
In 2016, she returned to British television with the BBC sketch comedy show Tracey Ullman's Show, her first project for the broadcaster in over 30 years. This led to the creation of the topical comedy series Tracey Breaks the News in 2017.
In 2017, Ullman was reportedly Britain's richest comedian and the second-richest British actress, with an estimated wealth of £80 million. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including twelve American Comedy Awards, seven Primetime Emmy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, four Satellite Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Actor Award.
Tracey Ullman was born in Slough, Buckinghamshire (now Berkshire), the younger of two daughters, to Doreen (née Cleaver; 1929–2015), who was of British and Roma extraction, and Anthony John Ullman (1917–1966), a Roman Catholic Pole. Anthony served in the Polish Army and took part in the Battle of Dunkirk during World War II. After emigrating and marrying in England, he worked as a solicitor, a furniture salesman, and a travel agent. He also brokered marriages and translated among the émigré Polish community.
When Ullman was six, her father, who had been recovering from a heart operation, died in front of her. She was subsequently uprooted to Hackbridge, southwest London. Her mother struggled to make ends meet without their father's income. In an effort to cheer her family up, Ullman, along with her sister Patti, created and performed nightly shows on their mother's bedroom windowsill. After their mother remarried, the family moved frequently across the country, and Ullman attended numerous state schools where she wrote and performed in school plays.
She eventually caught the attention of a headmaster who recommended that she attend a performing arts school. She was awarded a full scholarship to the Italia Conti Academy at the age of twelve. At sixteen, she attended a dance audition under the impression that she was applying for a summer season in Scarborough. The audition resulted in a contract with a German ballet company for a revival of Gigi in Berlin. Upon returning to England, she joined the Second Generation dance troupe, performing in London, Blackpool, and Liverpool. She branched out into musical theatre and was cast in numerous West End musicals including Grease, Elvis The Musical, and The Rocky Horror Show.
Ullman began her television career in 1980 playing Lynda Bellingham's daughter in the television series Mackenzie. "I really thought I was great when I did a quite serious soap opera for the BBC. I played a nice girl from St John's Wood. 'Mummy, I think I'm pregnant. I don't know who's done it.' Then I would fall down a hill or something. 'EEEEE! Oh, no, lost another baby.' It seemed all I ever did was have miscarriages—or make yogurt."
Ullman appeared in Les Blair's avant-garde Four in a Million, an improvised play about club acts, at London's Royal Court Theatre. She received the 1984 Critics' Circle Theatre Award for Most Promising New Actress for her performance.
In 1981, she was cast in the BBC Scotland sketch comedy programme A Kick Up the Eighties, which in turn led to her being offered the sketch show Three of a Kind, co-starring comedians Lenny Henry and David Copperfield. Ullman said, "My first reaction was 'you must be joking', as women are treated so shoddily in comedy. Big busty barmaids and all those sorts of clichés just bore me rigid." Eventually a deal was struck with the proviso that she would have script approval and could choose her own costumes. Three of a Kind premiered in July 1981, running for three series until 1983. Throughout the series, Ullman also sang, performing comical spoofs of well-known artists of the era such as Toyah, Bananarama, Jennifer Warnes, and Dollar. Three of a Kind led to a brief but successful singing career in 1983, as well as her winning her first BAFTA (for "Best Light Entertainment Performance") in 1984. By this time, she had become a household name with the British media referring to her as "Our Trace".
In 1985, she signed on to star in the ITV sitcom Girls on Top. She was cast as the promiscuous gold-digger Candice Valentine. The show, co-starring Dawn French, Ruby Wax, and Jennifer Saunders, continued for a second series without Ullman, who bowed out after the first.
In 1985, Ullman was persuaded by her husband, British independent television producer Allan McKeown, to join him in Los Angeles, where he was already partially based. She set her sights on a film and stage career, believing there was little in the way of television for her. Her British agent put together a videotape compilation of her work and began circulating it around Hollywood. The tape landed in the hands of Craig Kellem, vice president of comedy at Universal Television. A deal was immediately struck with CBS. I Love New York, a show about a "slightly wacky" British woman working in New York, was written by Saturday Night Live writer Anne Beatts. Unhappy with the direction the network wanted to take the show, Ullman's agent decided to contact producer James L. Brooks. Brooks felt that a sketch show would best suit her: "Why would you do something with Tracey playing a single character on TV when her talent requires variety? You can't categorize Tracey, so it's silly to come up with a show that attempted to." The Tracey Ullman Show debuted on 5 April 1987, along with Married... with Children. The show also produced The Simpsons as a series of animated shorts, or "bumpers", which aired before and after commercial breaks. The Simpsons shorts would eventually be spun off into their own half-hour series in 1989. The Tracey Ullman Show was awarded ten Primetime Emmy Awards, with Ullman winning three—one in the category of Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program in 1990. The show was the first Fox network primetime program to win an Emmy award. It concluded after a four-season run in 1990.
In 1991, Ullman's husband placed a successful bid on a television franchise in the South of England. The television programming lineup agreed upon included a Tracey Ullman special. Unlike the Fox show, this programme would be shot entirely on location. Tracey Ullman: A Class Act, a send-up of the British class system, premiered on 9 January 1993 on ITV. This led to HBO in America becoming interested in having a special made for them, with the caveat that Ullman take on a more American subject. She chose New York City. Tracey Ullman Takes on New York debuted on 9 October 1993. The programme went on to win two Emmy Awards, a CableAce Award, an American Comedy Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award. Its success led to the creation of the HBO sketch comedy series Tracey Takes On... in 1996.