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Pamela Stephenson
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Pamela Stephenson Connolly (born December 4, 1949) is a New Zealand actress, comedian and clinical psychologist, now a resident of New York City, USA.
henson was born in Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand. After attending the University of New South Wales and then Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated in 1971, Stephenson pursued a successful acting career in Australia for several years before moving to London in 1976, where she continued to act (theatrically and in television).
Probably her most widely recognised role was in the classic 1980s UK comedy television sketch show Not The Nine O'Clock News, alongside Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones.
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Encyclopedia
Pamela Stephenson Connolly (born December 4, 1949) is a New Zealand actress, comedian and clinical psychologist, now a resident of New York City, USA.
Comedy and acting
Stephenson was born in Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand. After attending the University of New South Wales and then Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated in 1971, Stephenson pursued a successful acting career in Australia for several years before moving to London in 1976, where she continued to act (theatrically and in television).
Probably her most widely recognised role was in the classic 1980s UK comedy television sketch show Not The Nine O'Clock News, alongside Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. It was on this programme that she met Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, whom she married in 1989.
Her personal contribution as a comedian added to the success of Not The Nine O'Clock News and led to a collaboration with comedic/satirist writers Mark Lepine and Mike Leigh. This spawned a book, How To Be A Complete Bitch, and a board game.
She has also featured in the American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (1984-1985), becoming the first SNL castmember to have been born outside of North America (the other two castmembers who hold this distinction are Morwenna Banks who was born in England, and Horatio Sanz, who was born in Chile). She has appeared in such films as Superman III, Bloodbath At The House Of Death and Mel Brooks's History of the World, Part 1.
Recurring characters on SNL
- Angela Bradleigh (Weekend Update commentator)
Celebrity impersonations on SNL
Celebrity impersonations on Not The Nine O'Clock News
Psychology
In 1996 she gained a doctorate in clinical psychology from the California Graduate Institute, one of twelve unaccredited schools in the state of California; she also works in private practice in Beverly Hills. Her psychological background proved useful when she wrote a biography of her husband, Billy, in which she analysed his behaviour and related elements of it to his being sexually abused by his father; the book won the 2002 British Book of the Year award. Her qualification is licensed for use within California only and her research is known only to herself and is not available through publication in professional journals.
In her capacity as a psychologist, she uses the names "Pamela Connolly" or "P.H. Connolly" (but see below, writing for the Guardian newspaper.)
In 2007 Connolly presented a series of programmes for British television channel More 4 called Shrink Rap in which she interviewed various celebrities using psychotherapeutic techniques (the format is similar to that of a Radio 4 series, In the Psychiatrist's Chair, which was presented by Antony Clare for many years). Those questioned were reality show star Sharon Osbourne, writer and performer Stephen Fry, Sarah Ferguson Duchess of York, former British Cabinet Minister David Blunkett and actor-comedian Robin Williams. While quasi-therapeutic in approach, the interviewees were briefed that the conversations were interviews and not strictly therapy. Connolly focused on relating various childhood experiences and traumas to the adult difficulties of the celebrities.
A new series of Shrink Rap began on More 4 in April 2008, with guests Joan Rivers, Gene Simmons, Kathleen Turner, Tony Curtis and Salman Rushdie.
Connolly writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper in Britain entitled "Sexual Healing", under the name Pamela Stephenson Connolly.
Personal life
She started practising Buddhism shortly before joining the television show Not The Nine O'Clock News in 1979.
Initially married to actor Nicholas Ball, she met Scottish comedian Billy Connolly in 1979 when (in the guise of Janet Street-Porter) she conducted a spoof interview with him in the BBC comedy series "Not The Nine O'Clock News". The couple have three children: Daisy (b. 1983), Amy (b. 1986) and Scarlett (b. 1988), and on December 20, 1989 they were married in Fiji.
Her sister Leslie is an opera singer in Switzerland.
Travels
In late 2004, she sold her house in California and spent a year on a sailing cruise around the South Pacific Ocean, following the path of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Stevenson. She said she was inspired by Fanny (also married to a Scotsman) who had convinced her husband to travel to the tropics for the sake of his fragile health. Her travels were documented in her book, "Treasure Islands". The boat she bought was re-christened "Takapuna" after her birthplace.
A year later, she went on another voyage to discover the fate of an ancestor, a sailing captain who had disappeared in the South Seas. The voyage was the subject of a documentary for Australian television, "Murder or Mutiny."
Books
External links
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