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Ann Magnuson (born January 4, 1956) is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer who first gained prominence in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan. The New York Times described her as "An endearing theatrical chameleon who has as many characters at her fingertips as Lily Tomlin does". Magnuson was born in Charleston, West Virginia to a journalist mother and a lawyer father. She had a brother, Bobby, who died in 1998 of complications from AIDS. She attended Holz Elementary and George Washington High School in Charleston. After graduating from Denison University... MORE

Ann Magnuson (born January 4, 1956) is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer who first gained prominence in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan. The New York Times described her as "An endearing theatrical chameleon who has as many characters at her fingertips as Lily Tomlin does". Magnuson was born in Charleston, West Virginia to a journalist mother and a lawyer father. She had a brother, Bobby, who died in 1998 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, New York and was a DJ and performer at Club 57 and the Mudd Club in Manhattan circa 1979 through the early 1980s, while pursuing a performance career on varied fronts. 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 the 1990s, Magnuson fronted the satirical faux-heavy LESS