Pamela Adlon (/ˈædlɒn/; née Segall) (born July 6, 1966) is an American actress. She is known for voicing Bobby Hill in the animated comedy series King of the Hill (1997–2010), for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award. She also voiced Beau in Dexter's Laboratory (1996–2003), Baloo in Jungle Cubs (1996–1998), the title role in the Pajama Sam video game series (1996–2001), Lucky in 101 Dalmatians: The Series (1997–1998), Ashley Spinelli in Recess (1997–2001), Otto Osworth in Time Squad (2001–2003), and Brigette Murphy in Milo Murphy's Law (2016–2019), among numerous others.
Adlon is also known for her roles in the comedy-drama series Californication (2007–2014) and Louie (2010–2015), the latter of which she additionally wrote and produced alongside Louis C.K. Her work on Louie garnered her four Primetime Emmy Award nominations. From 2016 to 2022, Adlon starred as Sam Fox on the acclaimed FX comedy-drama series Better Things, which she also co-created, wrote, produced, and directed. The series won a Peabody Award, and she was nominated twice for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She also starred alongside Redd Foxx on The Redd Foxx Show as 'Toni' in 1986.
Adlon was featured in numerous films since making her acting debut in Grease 2 (1982). Her most notable films include Say Anything... (1989), Bed of Roses (1996), Lucky 13 (2005), Conception (2011), I Love You, Daddy (2017), All Square (2018), and Holler (2020).
Early life
Adlon was born in New York City. She is the daughter of Marina Lucy (Leece) and Donald Maxwell "Don" Segall, who was a television comedy writer-producer and author of comic books and science fiction pulp novels. Her father produced The Dave Garroway Show, which became AM New York and then The Today Show. He was a page at NBC with Gil Cates and wrote erotic fiction under various pseudonyms, including Troy Conway. Adlon's mother is English, while her father, an American, was from Boston. Her father was born to a Jewish family of Russian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish descent and her mother, originally an Anglican, converted to Judaism. Adlon has said that her parents met at a USO event in Paris.
As a child, Adlon lived in the Carnegie House at 100 West 57th Street. She has said that she and her family lived bi-coastally, moving between Los Angeles and New York because her father was a journeyman writer and producer for TV. She began performing at age nine; one of her father's friends had a radio studio, so she would do voice-over work there. While in Los Angeles she did TV and film acting work. She attended Sarah Lawrence College for a semester. After moving to Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, she shared a house with Anna Gunn.
