Kristen Carroll Wiig (/wɪɡ/; born August 22, 1973) is an American actress, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and singer. Wiig is best known for being a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012.
Born in Canandaigua, New York, she was raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Rochester, New York. She moved to Los Angeles, where she joined the improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings and made her television debut as Dr. Pat on The Joe Schmo Show (2003).
Wiig joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2005 and appeared in the Christmas comedy film Unaccompanied Minors the next year. After a series of supporting roles in comedy films such as Knocked Up (2007), Adventureland (2009), Whip It (2009) and Paul (2011), she co-wrote and starred in the comedy film Bridesmaids (2011), which was critically and commercially successful. It earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Musical or Comedy, nominations for the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Cast.
Wiig lent her voice to the animated franchises How to Train Your Dragon (2010–2019) and Despicable Me (2010–2024). She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her role as Cynthia Morehouse in the comedy miniseries The Spoils of Babylon (2014). Her other film credits include Girl Most Likely (2012), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), The Skeleton Twins (2014), Welcome to Me (2014), The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015), The Martian (2015), Ghostbusters (2016), Downsizing (2017), Mother! (2017), Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019), and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020).
Early life
Wiig was born on August 22, 1973, in Canandaigua, New York, the daughter of Jon Wiig, who ran a lake marina in Western New York, and Laurie (née Johnston), an artist. She has an older brother Erik. Her father has Norwegian and Irish ancestry, and her mother, English and Scottish. The name Wiig comes from the area of Vik in Sogn og Fjordane in Norway. Kristen's paternal grandfather, Gunnar Wiig, emigrated from Norway to the United States as a child and grew up in Rochester, New York, where he was an accomplished broadcaster for the Rochester Red Wings baseball team, and later became an executive at WHEC radio, WHEC-TV, and WROC-TV.
Wiig moved with her family to Lancaster, Pennsylvania at the age of three, and attended Nitrauer Elementary School and Manheim Township Middle School until eighth grade. When she was 13, she and her family returned to Rochester where she attended Allendale Columbia School for ninth and tenth grades and graduated from Brighton High School.
Wiig attended Roanoke College, but soon returned to Rochester. She attended community college and embarked on a three-month outdoor-living program. She had no performing ambitions at the time. Wiig then attended the University of Arizona, majoring in art. When she took an acting class to fulfill a course requirement, the teacher suggested she continue to act. She was hired by a plastic surgery clinic to draw postsurgery bodies, but the day before the job began, she decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.
