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META DATA

by | Sep 12, 2013 | Past Celebrity Honorees

Sara Rue

Born and raised in New York City, Sara Rue spent most of her childhood backstage with her father, a Broadway stage manager. Rue’s acting career began at age nine when she was cast as Kevin Spacey’s daughter and Burt Lancaster’s granddaughter in the film Rocket Gibraltar. Shortly thereafter she won critical acclaim for her television series debut in the comedy Grand. Since then she has appeared as a series regular on various shows, including PhenomMinor AdjustmentsZoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane,PopularEastwick, and most recently, Malibu Country. She is best known for her starring role in ABC’s Less Than Perfect. Following that, Chuck Lorre added Rue for recurring appearances on Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. For the past two years she has had a recurring role on Rules of Engagement as Brenda, Patrick Warburton’s lesbian best friend and surrogate.

In features Rue starred as Sigourney Weaver’s cellmate in A Map of the World and appeared as a scene-stealing social misfit inCan’t Hardly Wait. She was also cast in Pearl Harbor as a tough-talking nurse. Originally there was no role for the young actress, but she so impressed Michael Bay that he flew her to Hawaii, threw her in the scenes with the nurses, and told her to “improvise and be funny.” She played Lili Taylor’s best friend in the adaptation of Anne Taylor’s novel, A Slipping Down Life. That same summer she received rave reviews for her portrayal of the title character in the film Gypsy 83. Rue also played the Attorney General of the United States, opposite Luke Wilson, in the Mike Judge film Idiocracy. She has recently been very active in the independent film world, completing a handful of films in the past few years, including Dorfman, which has won multiple festivals around the country this year.

On stage Rue starred at the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s (NYC) one-act festival two years in a row in productions of The Shallow End and Seventh Word, Four Syllables. In conjunction with shooting two television pilots and a feature film in Spring 1999, she made her Los Angeles theatre debut at the Matrix Theatre in Wendy McCloud’s play, The Water Children. She also starred in the world premiere musical Little Egypt at the Matrix Theatre, where she received tremendous praise for her portrayal of a lovable, social misfit and star-crossed lover. She later reprised that role for a short run Off-Broadway.

Rue has also begun producing film and television, recently selling her first movie as a producer to Dimension Films and selling her first half-hour pilot as the writer/creator to Warner Brothers and the CW.

In her spare time Rue loves to garden, play poker (mostly for charity) and hike with her husband and two dogs (both rescues). Some of her favorite charity associations are Project Angel Food, The Point Foundation, CAST, The Lily Claire Foundation and anything that helps animals.