Jan Hooks, the actress and comedian who rose to fame with sly turns on “Saturday Night Live” as Ivana Trump, Tammy Faye Bakker, Sinead O’Connor and as part of the lounge-singing Sweeney Sisters, has died. She was 57.
Her representative, Lisa Lieberman, confirmed the death to CNN. The cause of death was not revealed.
In the late-’80s era of the show that also featured Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Nora Dunn and later Mike Myers, Hooks was the definition of a team player, always putting the sketch first. It was a character-actress attitude, one admired by others on the show.
“She was totally amazing as a sketch player,” one of her colleagues, Kevin Nealon, told People magazine.
“She so immersed herself in her characters, and her timing was amazing. She got it from some crazy stratosphere, and I was so attracted to that talent in her, and I don’t think she ever knew how well respected and admired she was for her talent,” said Nealon, who was also dated Hooks for a while.
Hooks’ ability can best be seen in her portrayal of Tammy Faye Bakker, part of the evangelist couple who co-founded the PTL Club and were later embroiled in scandal. Bakker, in many ways, was an easy target: an overwrought figure who wore heavy eye makeup, the very caricature of an evangelist’s wife. But Hooks found something deeper, as she showed in a “Church Chat” sketch during the days when PTL was in trouble due to a Jim Bakker affair and accusations of high living by the couple.
Hooks also stood out with her portrayal of Candy Sweeney, the blonde half of an effervescent pair of lounge singers who ladled on bad jokes and schmaltzy versions of pop hits, ignorant of their over-the-top performances. They regularly included a clanging version of “The Trolly Song” from the ’40s movie “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
But Hooks generally shunned the star turns others took on the show. In “The Sinatra Group,” a parody of “The McLaughlin Group” led by Phil Hartman’s Frank Sinatra, she was a deadly serious Sinead O’Connor, letting Hartman get the laughs for his tough-talking Sinatra.
Hooks was on “SNL” from 1986 to 1991. She wasn’t planning to leave the show, she later said, but was offered a part on “Designing Women” and couldn’t pass up the opportunity. She played Carlene Dobber for two seasons on the show, which was set in her hometown of Atlanta.
Hooks was born in Decatur, Georgia — just outside Atlanta — in 1957. After moving to Florida and Texas in her teen years, she returned to the Georgia capital and joined a comedy troupe named the New Wit’s End Players, where she met writers Bonnie and Terry Turner.
The three soon had jobs on a TBS show built around the offbeat Bill Tush, back when TBS was Ted Turner’s Atlanta Braves-airing “SuperStation.” (Tush later became a CNN showbiz correspondent.) The Turners — no relation to Ted — also worked on “SNL” and later created “Third Rock from the Sun,” which occasionally featured Hooks.
Hooks also appeared on “30 Rock” and sometimes provided the voice of Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon, the wife of convenience store owner Apu, on “The Simpsons.”
Hooks had roles in just a handful of movies, but her turn in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” (1985) as an Alamo tour guide had many people sharing the scene on social media.
“Not now, but sometime this weekend I’ll think of Jan Hooks saying ‘adobe’ and I’ll get tear-eyed. I know it. #RIPJanHooks,” tweeted Patton Oswalt.
Hooks also appeared in “Batman Returns” (1992), “Coneheads” (1993) and “Simon Burch” (1998).
