Teri Lynn Hatcher (born December 8, 1964) is an American actress.
Hatcher was born in Covina, California, the daughter of Esther, a computer programmer who worked for Lockheed Martin, and Owen W. Hatcher, a nuclear physicist and electrical engineer. Hatcher's father was of Welsh and distant Choctaw Native American descent, and her mother had French, German, and Lebanese ancestry. Hatcher grew up in Sunnyvale, California. An only child, she attended Mango Junior High (now Sunnyvale Middle School), Fremont High School in Sunnyvale and De Anza College in Cupertino.
In March 2006, Hatcher revealed to Vanity Fair that she was sexually abused from the age of five by Richard Hayes Stone, an uncle by marriage who was later divorced by Hatcher's aunt. Her parents, she said, were unaware of the abuse at the time. In 2002, she assisted Santa Clara County prosecutors with their indictment of Stone for a more recent molestation that led his female victim to commit suicide at the age of eleven. Stone pled guilty to four counts of child molestation and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. In an interview appearing in Vanity Fair, Hatcher said she told the prosecutors about her own abuse because she was haunted by thoughts of the 11-year-old girl who shot herself, and feared Stone might escape conviction. Stone died of colon cancer on August 19, 2008, having served six years of his sentence.
Hatcher studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater. One of her early jobs (in 1984) was as a cheerleader with the San Francisco 49ers. During this time, she also appeared as one of the mermaids on the show The Love Boat in its final season. Hatcher landed a co-starring role in 1993, opposite Dean Cain in Lois and Clark. She portrayed Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane in the television series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman from 1993 to 1997. At the height of the show's popularity in 1995, a picture of Hatcher wrapped in a Superman cape was reportedly downloaded on the Internet 20,000 times. Hatcher also appeared in films such as Spy Kids, Dead in the Water, 2 Days in the Valley and The Cool Surface. She co-starred with Alec Baldwin in Heaven's Prisoners, which featured Hatcher's only on-screen nude scenes and failed at the box office. ABC cancelled Lois & Clark in 1997. She made a guest appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation and had a recurring role on MacGyver as Penny Parker, a high-strung, young woman who always seemed to get into trouble.
Hatcher hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live in 1996. She beat out four other actresses for one of the lead role on ABC's Desperate Housewives, on which she stars as Susan Mayer, a role for which she won the Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy Golden Globe Award in January 2005. In 2005, Hatcher won the Screen Actors Guild award in the same category. In July 2005, she was nominated for an Emmy Award as Best Actress in a Comedy Series for the role, along with co-stars Marcia Cross and Felicity Huffman.
As of April 2006, Hatcher is one of the highest paid television actresses in the United States. She reportedly earns $285,000 per episode of Desperate Housewives. In May 2006, she released her first book, Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life. On April 9, 2008, Hatcher sang on Idol Gives Back singing Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats".
Between 1985 and 1988, she had a relationship with her MacGyver costar Richard Dean Anderson. Hatcher married Marcus Leithold on June 4, 1988; they divorced the following year. On May 27, 1994, she married actor Jon Tenney; they had a daughter, Emerson Rose, on November 10, 1997, and divorced in March 2003. Hatcher has also been dating Stephen Kay, who played Reginald, the Quartermaines' butler, on General Hospital. Since then she and Stephen have broken up.
She also briefly dated radio host Ryan Seacrest which was proven by widley circulated photos of them kissing in 2006. In June 2007, Hatcher appeared on The Paul O'Grady Show where she revealed that she writes a column in Glamour.
In February 2008, Hydroderm sued Hatcher for breach of contract, claiming that she had promoted the beauty products of other companies. She insisted that her promotion of CityLips' lip plumper did not affect the Hydroderm deal. Her attorney Alan Wertheimer called the lawsuit an "unjustified and public assault" on her "good name, reputation and celebrity." Her lawyer persuaded a judge in Los Angeles to move the case to arbitration.
Teri Hatcher is currently single, spending most of her time with her daughter and a multitude of work projects.