Lee Garlington is one of those actresses you know you’ve seen somewhere, and you would be correct—because she’s been in a whole lot of stuff; in fact, she’s amassed more than 225 credits in her career. Even though she didn’t start her acting adventures until she was almost 30, she’s got the kind of face and talent that makes her a fabulous character, memorable even if she only appears in on episode of this or that. After a couple of uncredited roles, she made her big-screen acting role as mean waitress Myrna in Psycho II (1983), a part she played so well, they brought her back for Psycho III (1986). You can see her bare breasts and dead look in an episode of Six Feet Under, and get a glimpse of her sexily clad bod in The Babysitter (1995) with Alicia Silverstone. Elsewhere on the big screen, she’s been in so many movies, it’s hard for Mr. Skin to pick just a few. First off, after she appeared in his first feature film, In the Mood (1987) with Patrick Dempsey and Talia Balsam, writer/director Phil Alden Robinson decided she was his good-luck charm, and cast her in almost all of his movies, including Field of Dreams (1989) with Kevin Costner, Sneakers (1992) with Robert Redford, The Sum of All Fears (2002) with Ben Affleck, and The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014) with Robin Williams. Other big Hollywood films she appeared in include Cobra (1986) with Sylvester Stallone, Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) with Eric Stoltz, The Seventh Sign (1988) with Demi Moore, My Life (1993) with Michael Keaton, Dante’s Peak (1997) with Pierce Brosnan, Evolution (2001) with David Duchovny, One Hour Photo(2002) with Robin Williams, A Lot Like Love (2005) with Ashton Kutcher, Akeelah and the Bee (2006) with Angela Bassett, and The Little Things (2021) with Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, and Jared Leto. And that doesn’t even cover the 122 television series she’s appeared in, which includes Broken, where she won a Primetime Emmy nomination for her role as Darlene in 2018. So, you know, you’re not crazy—you have seen her somewhere.
