Jennifer Tilly
Jennifer Tilly was born Jennifer E. Chan in Harbor City, Los Angeles, California and started her acting career in her teenage years through a theatre program at Stephens College in Missouri.
Tilly had small roles in TV shows and movies beginning in 1983 and also appeared as Gary’s girlfriend on “the Gary Shandling Show” which aired on HBO in the mid 1980’s.
Tilly’s breakthrough film role was as a singing waitress in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) in a part that was specially written for her. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as a hopelessly bad actress in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway (1994).
Even though Tilly has gained some additional popularity in recent years for providing voice-over work for TV series and is a semi-regular cast member on Family Guy, voicing the Griffin family’s neighbour, she is know famous for being the first Hollywood celebrity to win a WSOP bracelet.
On June 27, 2005, Tilly won a World Series of Poker bracelet and $158,625 in the Ladies’ No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em event, outlasting 600 other players. In September of the same year, Tilly also won the third World Poker Tour Ladies Invitational Tournament held at the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles.
Tilly has also played in the Poker Royale series on the Game Show Network (GSN), the third season of Poker Superstars Invitational on Fox Sports News (FSN), and the 2006 season of Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo.
Although it wasn’t Tilly’s original intention to become such a high-profile player in the poker world she recently stated in a television interview that at this point in her life she is more interested in pursuing poker than acting, which is quite understandable considering that Tilly’s total tournament winnings exceed $340,000. Nothing bad for someone who became involved in poker playing regular home game with friends!
After developing her poker playing skills, Tilly began playing in competitive tournaments. The encouragement came from her boyfriend, professional poker player Phil “The Unabomber” Laak, who she met at the WPT Invitational tournament at the Commerce Casino. After winning the 2005 WSOP, Tilly told one of the reporters that her boyfriend Laak was responsible for teaching her everything she knows about poker and for helping her work out her game.
Look ahead to see Jennifer around the poker rooms a lot more in the future. In one of her recent interviews she said, “I’m hooked on poker. I’m not going to stop playing until I lose all my money.”
