Maile Flanagan

Flanagan was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Her father worked in an intelligence position for the U.S. military. In 1969, her family was stationed in Bangkok, Thailand and when she was ten, they moved to Germany.^[1]

She graduated from Munich America High School (MAHS), a Department of Defense (DOD) school, in 1983. In 1987, Flanagan graduated from Boston College with a degree in political science, concentrated in history and mathematics.^[1][2]

After a brief stint in Washington, D.C., Flanagan moved to Minneapolis and worked in theater roles and did stand-up comedy. She was in the comedy troupe Every Mother's Nightmare with Wayne Wilderson, Tom McCarthy and Nancy Walls. In 1996, she moved to Los Angeles with the stage production of The Bad Seed, which won an LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Comedy Ensemble.^[3]

Flanagan's first major voice role in animation was Piggley Winks in Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, for which she was nominated for an Annie Award in 2005. She was then cast as the title character, Naruto Uzumaki, in the English dub of Naruto, and has consistently voiced the kid, teen and adult incarnations of Naruto in all of its properties including numerous spin-offs and video game adaptations.^[4][5] She also earned an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for her performance in Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks in 2006.^[6][7][8]

In 2009, Flanagan provided the voice of Mother Aardvark in the third installment of Ice Age film series.^[9] Also in 2009, she appeared in Marc Webb's romantic comedy drama 500 Days of Summer and Justin Tanner's play Voice Lessons.^[10][11][12] The following year, she lent her voice to Orangu-Tammy in the animated film Kung-Fu Magoo.^[13]

From 2012, Flanagan starred as Terry Perry, principal of the Mission Creek High School in the Disney XD live-action comedy series Lab Rats; she was in the show for four seasons until it ended in 2016.^[14][15] She reprised the role again in the 2016 spinoff of the series called Lab Rats: Elite Force.^[16][17] She also had a recurring role as Connie in the third and fourth season of the Showtime comedy-drama TV series Shameless (2013–14).

In February 2023, Flanagan appeared as Tina in the ABC sitcom Not Dead Yet, based on Alexandra Potter's 2020 novel Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up.^[2][18] She also provided the voice of Matt Hornsby in Royal Crackers, which ran on Adult Swim in April of that same year.^[19][20]

Flanagan is openly a lesbian. She married Lesa Hammett in 2008.^[21][22]