Childhood & Early Life
Missi Pyle was born as Andrea Kay “Missi’ Pyle on November 16, 1972 in Houston, Texas, to Linda and Frank Pyle. She was raised in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the youngest in the family, with two elder sisters, Debbie and Julie, and two elder brothers, Sam and Paul. She also has a half-brother Gordon and a half-sister Meredith.
Pyle attended Germantown High School in Germantown, Tennessee, before enrolling at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She graduated from the same in 1995.
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Career
Missi Pyle began her career in acting with a minor role in the 1997 comedy film, ‘As Good as it Gets’. Starring Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt, it gave Pyle the much needed break that she had long been waiting for.
After a dull phase lasting over a year, her career caught up yet again as she found a notable role in the science fiction film, ‘Galaxy Quest’ as Laliari in 1999. The same year, she bagged guest roles in the popular television series’ ‘Mad about You’, ‘Friends’ and ‘Drew Carey Show’.
After her breakout role in ‘Galaxy Quest’, Pyle played her first ever negative character in ‘Home Alone 4’. She soon followed it up with a supporting role in ‘Josie and the Pussycats’.
In 2003, Missi Pyle earned a meaty side role in ‘Bringing Down the House’. The same year, she also starred in the first of the many to follow Tim Burton’s films ‘Big Fish’. Over the coming years, she was seen in Burton’s films such as ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘Just My Luck’ and ‘Soccer Mom’ in which she played a double role.
Pyle’s stream of successful supporting roles continued as she did one film after the other. A few of her notable films during the early 2000s are ‘Along Came Polly’, ‘Soul Plane’, ‘Stormbreaker’ and ’50 First Dates’. She played the female lead in ‘BachelorMan’ and the character of Fran Stalinovskovichdavidovitchsky in the film ‘Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story’.
With her film career escalating upwards, there was no stopping her television career as well. Pyle played Jake's Elementary School teacher Ms. Pasternak on the popular TV series ‘Two and a Half Men’ that ran from 2004 to 2015. Concurrently, she also appeared in several other television series including ‘Boston Legal’, ‘The Sarah Silverman Program’ and ‘Heroes’.
In 2011, she starred as Constance in the film ‘The Artist’. Following this, she starred in the movies ‘My Uncle Rafael’, and ‘Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters.’ During this time, her television career was also on a roll as she appeared in four episodes of ‘The Life & Times of Tim’ as a receptionist, two episodes each in ‘The Mentalist’ and ‘$h*! My Dad Says.’
The year 2014 was a busy one for Missi Pyle as she appeared in four films including ‘A Haunted House 2’, ‘Just Before I Go’, ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Kiss Me’. Furthermore, her television career also peaked as she starred in ‘Inside Amy Schumer’, ‘The Exes’, ‘The Crazy Ones’, ‘Jennifer Falls’ and ‘Partners’.
In 2016, she had with back-to-back film releases including ‘Director's Cut’, ‘Captain Fantastic’, ‘Slash’ and ‘Pandemic’. She also had a couple of guest appearances in television series, such as ‘Bordertown’, ‘The Soul Man’, ‘Sing It!’, ‘Lady Dynamite’, ‘Major Crimes’, ‘Mary + Jane’ and ‘Notorious’.
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Pyle’s upcoming releases include the 2017 film ‘Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle’ in which she plays Coach Webb. She was recently seen in the televisions series ‘The Catch’ portraying the role of Chloe Jackson.
Television and films apart, Pyle is also active on the online media. Given the rising demand for the internet media, she starred in twelve episodes of the web series ‘Greetings from Home’ as Sue in 2012 and later bagged main role as Eileen in the 2013 web series ‘Cleaners’.
Theatre too has been on the cards for this prolific actress. After a stint in ‘900 Oneonta’ in 1996, she found a role in the Broadway play ‘Boeing-Boeing’ opposite Christine Baranski, Mark Rylance, Greg Germann, Paige Davis and Rebecca Gayheart in 2008. In 2012, she played Sister Joan in ‘Bare’.
While acting has been the forte of Pyle, the multi-talented actress has tried her hand at singing as well, thus realizing her long held dream of becoming a rock star. Along with Shawnee Smith, she started the country music band ‘Smith & Pyle’ under their record label Urban Prairie Records. The first album, ‘It's OK to Be Happy,’ was released digitally through iTunes and Amazon.com in July 2008. Two years later, they came up with the singles ‘One Night Stand’ and ‘Rafael’. In 2011, the band was officially disbanded.
Major Works
Extremely talented and artistically endowed, Missi Pyle found success early in her career with the 1999 award winning movie ‘Galaxy Quest’. The film was a major hit and established Pyle’s reputation as a notable actor. Consequently, she stared in several hit films in the following decade, including ‘The Artist’, ‘DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story’, ‘Big Fish’, ‘50 First Dates’, ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, ‘Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay’ and ‘Gone Girl’.
Interestingly, as Pyle garnered fame for her films, her television career also blossomed. She found notable roles in several successful television series, including ‘Mad About You’, ‘Friends’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Two and a Half Men’, ‘Frasier’, ‘My Name Is Earl’, ‘2 Broke Girls’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, and ‘Jennifer Falls’.
Marriage & Love Life
Missi Pyle tied the nuptial knot with Casey Anderson on September 12, 2008 in Montana. He is a naturalist by profession. However, the two parted ways in 2012. Prior to marrying Anderson, Pyle had been married to Antonio Sacre from 2000 to 2005.
In November 2009, Pyle and bandmate Shawnee Smith pretended to get married in a faux ceremony in support of repealing Prop 8 in California. Actor Hal Sparks, who was dressed as a priest, performed the ceremony with them using rainbow-coloured hula hoops as wedding rings.
