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Double Play for Allison Janney

In her last two high profile pics, Allison Janney deftly portrayed a concerned mom to spitfire, strong-willed daughters. She was Penny Pingleton's overprotective, eyebrow-raising mom in the film adaptation of Hairspray and she was tender, tough and touching as Juno's substitute stepmom in Juno. Despite her believability as a parental unit, Janney is breaking out of the mom mold in a pair of upcoming comedies.

Janney will appear in the tentatively-titled This Must Be The Place, a Sam Mendes-directed comedy, and in A Thousand Words with Eddie Murphy.

In Place, Janney will play a crass former employer of Maya Rudolph, an expectant mom traveling the country with her husband, looking for the best place to raise her unborn child. In Words, Janney will play the powerful literary agent to Murphy's character, who finds out he must speak a thousand words before he croaks.

After shooting these films in Arizona and LA, respectively, Janney will march over to Broadway, where she's nabbed a starring role in the musical adaptation of Nine To Five. Somebody get this woman a massage, since she's the hardest working 40-something actress in Hollywood.

—The ARTISTdirect Staff
04.18.08