Camryn Manheim

American actor Camryn Manheim, best known for her Emmy Award-winning role as Ellenor Frutt on the legal drama "The Practice" (ABC, 1997-2004), was born in New Jersey and raised in Peoria, Illinois and Long Beach, California. Manheim first began acting in high school after she attended a Renaissance Fair. She was fascinated by the costumes and pure spectacle of it all, and immediately decided to pursue acting as a career. She would later go on to earn her BFA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, before entering the prestigious graduate acting program at New York University.

After earning her MFA in acting from NYU, Manheim stayed in New York to pursue her acting career full-time. It was around this time that she began immersing herself in theater, and soon began appearing in numerous plays each year. As a day job, Manheim worked at hospitals as a sign language interpreter, a skill that she would later use on an episode of "The Practice." By the mid-90s, Manheim was starting to pick up bit parts in films and on television, most notably "Law & Order" (NBC, 1990-2010), "The Road to Wellville" (1994), and "Jeffrey" (1995). In 1995, Manheim also received wide acclaim for her successful one-woman show "Wake Up, I'm Fat" (1995), which appeared on stages in New York.

Her big break, however, came in 1997 when she was cast on the ABC legal drama "The Practice." Manheim would eventually go on to receive an Emmy for her performance and appeared in all 167 episodes of the series. After "The Practice" ended its run in 2004, Manheim continued racking up roles on television, including recurring parts on "Ghost Whisperer" (CBS, 2005-2010), "Extant" (CBS, 2014-15), and "Person of Interest" (CBS, 2011-16). Having been fortunate enough to have worked steadily for over 20 years, 2018 also proved to be a banner year for Manheim. In addition to joining the cast of the comedy "Living Biblically" (CBS, 2018- ), she also appeared on the historical miniseries "Waco" (Spike, 2018).