Jane Sibbett

Sibbett was born on November 28, 1962, in Berkeley, California. She was the youngest of five children and was raised on Alameda Island,^[3] in the San Francisco Bay.^[4] Sibbett is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, where she became a member of the California Delta chapter of Pi Beta Phi, an international women's fraternity.^[5]

Sibbett started her acting career as Jane Wilson on the NBC soap opera Santa Barbara in 1986–87, for which she was nominated for a Best Newcomer Soap Opera Digest Awards.^{[6][failed verification]} In 1989, Sibbett won the role of Laurie Parr on the CBS comedy The Famous Teddy Z, co-starring with Jon Cryer and Alex Rocco. The series lasted one season. In 1991, Sibbett was cast as status-conscious bombshell Heddy Newman on the Fox sitcom Herman's Head,^[7] which quickly gained a cult following on the young broadcast network and lasted three seasons. Beginning in 1994, she played the occasional role of Carol Willick on Friends, a part-time stint that lasted until the end of the show's seventh season in 2001. During her Friends association, Sibbett had regular roles on the short-lived CBS sitcom If Not for You (1995), playing the jilted fiancée of her former Herman's Head co-star Hank Azaria, and in the second season of The WB's Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher (1997–98), playing school headmaster Dr. Katherine Emerson.

Sibbett has appeared in more than 200 episodes of multiple TV series, including 21 Jump Street and The Nanny. She starred in the 1998 movie Noah alongside Tony Danza and Wallace Shawn as well as in 1998's The Second Arrival, alongside Patrick Muldoon and Michael Sarrazin. Sibbett appeared in Dan O'Bannon's 1992 film The Resurrected. She also co-starred with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in It Takes Two (1995),^[8][9] and the telefilm Au Pair (1999).^[10][11]

In 1996, Sibbett was offered the role of Debra Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond. CBS executives felt that she was right for the role and Sibbett signed a deal for the show; however, she vacated the role upon learning that star Ray Romano had not been informed, along with other key staff members, that she had been cast in the part. The role went to Patricia Heaton, who had been the first choice of Romano and show creator Philip Rosenthal. ^[12][13]

Sibbett has co-starred in the movies Jessica Darling's It List (2016), Winter Wedding (2017), A Date By Christmas Eve (2019), the pilot Manopause (2020), and the 27th Annual Critics' Choice 2022 nominee List of a Lifetime (2021) directed by indie director Roxy Shih.^[14][15]

In 2019, Sibbett won the Michael D Publishers Award, a nonfiction writing scholarship to the Story Summit Writer's School, to complete the manuscript of her memoirs, About Jane.^[16] Sibbett also joined the Story Summit's group of faculty, supporting other burgeoning writers and served as the Chairperson for one year for its Storyteller Foundation.^[17]

Sibbett has long been an advocate for survivors of domestic violence, working with the nine shelters of 1736 Family Crisis Center in Los Angeles.^[18]

In 1989, Sibbett began dating Jon Cryer after working with him on The Famous Teddy Z.^[19]

In 1992, Sibbett married Karl Fink, a TV writer and producer who worked on the first two seasons of Herman's Head. Fink and Sibbett divorced in January 2016. They have three children together.^[20]