Jan Hooks, an actress, and comedian who gained notoriety for her sneaky appearances on “Saturday Night Live” as Tammy Faye Bakker, Sinead O’Connor, Ivana Trump, and a lounge member singing Sweeney Sisters, has passed away. She was 57 years old.
Her agent, Lisa Lieberman, informed CNN that she had passed away. There was no mention of the reason for de@th.
Hooks was the epitome of a team player during the late 1980s period of the program, which also starred Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Nora Dunn, and subsequently Mike Myers. Hooks always placed the sketch first. The other characters on the show admired her character-actress attitude.
“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,” Nealon, who had a brief relationship with Hooks, said.
The clearest example of Hooks’ talent is her depiction of Tammy Faye Bakker, a member of the evangelical couple that formed the PTL Club and ultimately found themselves in controversy.
In many ways, Bakker was an easy target because she embodied the stereotype of an evangelist’s wife: an overwrought woman with heavy eye makeup.
However, Hooks discovered something more profound, as demonstrated in a “Church Chat” sketch during the PTL’s troubled times due to a Jim Bakker affair and the couple’s claims of high living.
With her depiction of Candy Sweeney, the blonde half of an effervescent duo of lounge singers who liberally applied awful jokes and schmaltzy renditions of pop songs while being unaware of their extravagant performances, Hooks also stood out.
They frequently played a clattering version of “The Trolley Song” from the 1940 film “Meet Me in St. Louis.”
But Hooks typically avoided the show’s star turns that other actors made. She played a deadly serious Sinead O’Connor in “The Sinatra Group,” a parody of “The McLaughlin Group” hosted by Phil Hartman as Frank Sinatra, allowing Hartman to receive the laughs for his tough-talking Sinatra.
Hooks appeared on “SNL” between 1986 and 1991. She later claimed that she had no intention of leaving the program but had to accept a role in “Designing Women” because it had been given to her.
In the two seasons she spent on the show, which had its Atlanta setting just adjacent to her hometown, she portrayed Carlene Dobber.
In 1957, Hooks was born in Decatur, Georgia. She spent her teenage years in Florida and Texas before returning to Atlanta and joining the New Wit’s End Players, a comedy group where she first met Bonnie and Terry Turner.
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The three quickly obtained positions on a TBS program centered on the eccentric Bill Tush when Ted Turner’s “SuperStation” still aired Atlanta Braves games on TBS. (Tush eventually rose to prominence as a CNN showbiz reporter.)
The Turners, unrelated to Ted, contributed to “SNL” and later produced “3rd Rock from the Sun,” a show that occasionally featured Hooks.
In addition, Hooks appeared on “30 Rock” and occasionally performed Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon, the voice of Apu, the convenience store proprietor, on “The Simpsons.”
Only a few movies featured Hooks, but when she played an Alamo tour guide in “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” (1985), many people shared the clip online.
“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.
Other films starring Hooks include “Simon Burch” (1998), “Coneheads” (1993), and “Batman Returns” (1992).
People that passed away in 2014