Carolyn Lawrence

Carolyn Lawrence may be best known as the woman behind Texan squirrel Sandy Cheeks on Nickelodeon's madcap cartoon "SpongeBob SquarePants," but this actress/voice artist started out as a professional dancer. She was working with the Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Chicago, when, on a lark, she auditioned to provide the voice to a talking Snoozie doll and booked it with ease.

This proved to be a turning point, for while she managed to land a handful of small roles in film and television during the early 1990s, it was with voice work that her career really took off. In 1999, she was cast as the wily but lovable mammal on "SpongeBob SquarePants"; she has gone on to voice Sandy for more than 10 years. In that time she has won roles on a number of cartoons.

In 2002, she was hired to play Cindy Vortex, the surly but smart antagonist on Nickelodeon's "The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius." Interestingly, Lawrence was initially called in only to provide the scratch track for the part--a temporary audio track for the animators until an actress could be hired. However, the producers liked her take on Cindy so much that she was brought on board.

Three years later she scored the title role in the satirical stop-motion series "Moral Orel." While the latter two series have wrapped, "SpongeBob SquarePants" is still going strong, as its zany comedy continues to appeal to kids and adults alike.