Fast five with Kate McKinnon
This blonde is getting much attention for her role in Ghostbusters
FACT FILE
NAME Kathryn McKinnon Berthold
BORN Jan 6, 1984, New York, USA
FILMOGRAPHY Sisters (2015), The Angry Birds Movie (2016), Finding Dory (2016), Ghostbusters (2016)
1 NO BLONDE BIMBO
The 32-year-old brainiac was an overachiever growing up.
She started learning to play the piano when she was five and picked up the guitar and cello in middle school. She also performed in plays and dance recitals.
McKinnon also graduated from Columbia University in the US with a degree in theatre in 2006 and co-founded the musical improv comedy group Tea Party during her final semester at the Ivy League institution.
2 FUNNY BUSINESS
She feels blessed to have a steady career as an actress and comedian, and her career goal is to hang on to the job.
She told Marie Claire magazine: "To be employed in the entertainment industry is a miracle. Every day I look in the mirror and think 'Holy crap, I'm employed'."
3 COMEDIC COPYCAT
McKinnon's gift for celebrity impressions became well-known with her spot-on imitation of the likes of politician Hillary Clinton, pop star Justin Bieber and actress Emilia Clarke on US sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL) since 2012.
But she took it to a different level when she dressed like and imitated host Ellen DeGeneres on the latter's talk show while sharing the screen with her, and returned three years later to do it again.
McKinnon danced through the crowd with DeGeneres in 2013 and took over DeGeneres' monologue in 2016.
4 SNL START
When McKinnon joins fellow US actresses Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Melissa McCarthy as parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in the rebooted Ghostbusters film, which opens here tomorrow, it will not be the first time she has teamed up with Wiig and Jones.
When McKinnon joined SNL in its 37th season, she shared the small screen with Wiig in the latter's final season on the show.
Jones, who was initially a writer on SNL, joined the show's cast in 2014 but confused McKinnon's name with the Duchess of Cambridge's.
"We happened to be out to dinner, and (Jones) looked at me and said, 'Kate Middleton, you're all right'," McKninnon said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "And I said, 'Leslie, it's McKinnon. You've known me (for) a year!'"
5 GHOST-BUSTING GAL
As nuclear engineer Jillian Holtzmann, McKinnon plays the resident weirdo in Ghostbusters and described the character as a "genius" and "bizarre".
"I'm the odd one," she told men's magazine GQ. "On SNL, I like to play characters that shouldn't be as confident as they are, who are just on the fringes but not aware of that. The character I play in Ghostbusters is a spiritual continuation."
SNL at the movies
TINA FEY SISTERS (2015)
AMY POEHLER SISTERS (2015)
KRISTEN WIIG BRIDESMAIDS (2011)
MAYA RUDOLPH BRIDESMAIDS (2011)
MOLLY SHANNON ME AND EARL AND THE DYING GIRL (2015)