Ann Magnuson (born January 4, 1956) is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer. She was described by The New York Times in 1990 as "An endearing theatrical chameleon who has as many characters at her fingertips as Lily Tomlin does".
A founding member of the 1980s band Bongwater, Magnuson starred in the ABC sitcom Anything but Love (1989–92). Her film appearances include The Hunger (1983), Making Mr. Right (1987), Clear and Present Danger (1994), Panic Room (2002), and One More Time (2015).
Early life and career:
Magnuson was born in Charleston, West Virginia, to a journalist mother and a lawyer father. She had a brother, Bobby, who died in 1988 of complications from AIDS. She attended Holz Elementary and George Washington High School in Charleston. After graduating from Denison University in 1978, she moved to New York City and was a DJ and performer at Club 57 and the Mudd Club in Manhattan around 1979 through the early 1980s. She created such characters as Anoushka, a Soviet lounge singer, wearing a wig backwards and singing mock-Russian lyrics to pop music standards, and separately sang in an all-girl percussion group, Pulsallama, whose 1982 single "The Devil Lives In My Husband's Body" was a housewife's lament of a spouse who appears to be possessed. Later, in 1987, Magnuson fronted the satirical faux-heavy metal band Vulcan Death Grip.
In an interview for the 2002 WETA-TV PBS special Lance Loud! A Death in An American Family, Magnuson credited the idea of Lance Loud — a member of an all-American family filmed day-in/day-out for the landmark PBS documentary An American Family, who came out as gay during the course of that documentary miniseries — with inspiring her to leave West Virginia for New York:
I watched An American Family alone in the kitchen and none of my other family members were interested in it, and I was fascinated, as everybody my age was, by Lance, and I really think that's what got me there. I immediately started hanging out at all the clubs that he hung out in, and I wanted to go to the places that I'd seen on television. ... I met him in 1978 when I got to New York City and was hanging out at CBGB. ... I honestly can't remember the exact moment but I know I was dazzled. I was just this little hick from West Virginia and I was meeting a celebrity, an icon, somebody who had made it.
Magnuson made her film debut in the 1982 film Vortex.
In the late '70s and early '80s, Magnuson ran Club 57, located in the basement of the Polish National church. It became a center of a world that included Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, and many others from New York's budding graffiti and downtown scenes. Club 57 was known for its theme nights such as Reggae Miniature Golf and Model World of Glue Night.
