Age, Biography, and Wiki
Julia Louis-Dreyfus was born on January 13, 1961, in New York City. She is the daughter of Gerard Louis-Dreyfus, a billionaire financier, and Judith LeFever, a former special needs tutor. Julia's early life was marked by her family's wealth and her parents' divorce when she was a year old. She attended the Holton-Arms School in Maryland and later studied theater at Northwestern University.
| Occupation | Stage Actress |
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| Date of Birth | 13 January 1961 |
| Age | 64 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Capricorn |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Julia Louis-Dreyfus stands at about 5 feet 3 inches (160 cm) tall. Her weight and other measurements are not frequently reported in public sources.
| Height | 5 feet 3 inches |
| Weight | |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been married to Brad Hall, an American actor, comedian, and writer, since 1987. The couple met while attending Northwestern University and have two children together, Henry Hall and Charles Hall.
Her mother, Judith, is an American writer and special needs educator. Her father, Gérard Louis-Dreyfus (1932–2016), was a French billionaire who served as chairman of the Louis Dreyfus Company. Her paternal grandfather, Pierre Louis-Dreyfus (1908–2011), was president of the Louis Dreyfus Group commodities and shipping conglomerate. He was a member of a Jewish family from Alsace, and served as a cavalry officer and member of the French Resistance during World War II. Louis-Dreyfus is the great-great-granddaughter of French businessman Léopold Louis-Dreyfus (1833–1915), founder of the Louis Dreyfus Group, which members of her family still control. She is the fifth cousin four times removed of Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935) of the infamous Dreyfus affair. Robert Louis-Dreyfus (1946–2009), her father's second cousin, was the CEO of Adidas and owner of the soccer team Olympique de Marseille. Julia's paternal grandmother was the daughter of a Brazilian-Jewish father (whose family was Dutch, English, and Polish).
In 1962, a year after her birth, Louis-Dreyfus's parents divorced. She has said that she first noticed her penchant for comedy after sticking raisins up her nose at the age of three, which first made her mother laugh but then led to an emergency hospital visit. After moving to Washington, D.C., when Louis-Dreyfus was four, her mother married L. Thompson Bowles, dean of the George Washington University Medical School; Louis-Dreyfus gained a half-sister, Lauren Bowles, also an actress. Due to her stepfather's work with Project HOPE, she spent her childhood in several U.S. states and countries such as Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia. In 1979, she graduated from the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland. She later said of the school, "There were things I did in school that, had there been boys in the classroom, I would have been less motivated to do. For instance, I was president of the honor society."
Following a voice role in the highly successful Pixar film A Bug's Life (1998), Louis-Dreyfus lent her voice as Snake's girlfriend Gloria in The Simpsons episode "A Hunka Hunka Burns in Love". In 2001, she made several special guest appearances on Seinfeld co-creator Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, playing herself fictionally trying to break the "curse" by planning to star in a show in which she would play an actress affected by a Seinfeld-like curse.
After several years away from a regular TV job, Louis-Dreyfus began a new single-camera sitcom, Watching Ellie, which premiered on NBC in February 2002. The series was created by husband Brad Hall and co-starred Steve Carell and Louis-Dreyfus's half-sister Lauren Bowles. The initial premise of the show was to present viewers with a "slice of life" from the goings-on and happenings of the life of Ellie Riggs, a Southern California jazz singer. The first season included a 22-minute countdown kept digitally in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, which many critics panned, claiming it was useless and "did nothing for the show." Overall, the show received mixed reviews but debuted strongly with over 16 million viewers tuning in for the series premiere, and maintained an average audience of about 10 million viewers per week.
In 2005, Louis-Dreyfus was cast in the title role of a new CBS sitcom, The New Adventures of Old Christine. The series and its concept were created by writer and producer of Will & Grace, Kari Lizer. The series told the story of Christine Campbell, a single mother who manages to maintain a fantastic relationship with her ex-husband while running a women's gym. The series debuted on CBS in March 2006 to an audience of 15 million and was initially a ratings winner for the network.
In May and June 2011, Louis-Dreyfus teamed up with husband Brad Hall for her first short film, Picture Paris. This was the first time the couple had collaborated since their early-2000s NBC comedy Watching Ellie. Hall wrote and directed the film, while Louis-Dreyfus played the lead role of an ordinary woman with an extraordinary obsession with the city of Paris. The film premiered on January 29, 2012, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and has received considerable critical acclaim. It made its television premiere on HBO on December 17, 2012.
In 2020, Louis-Dreyfus headlined the comedy-drama Downhill, opposite Will Ferrell. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released on February 14. Next, she voiced a suburban elf mother in Pixar's Onward opposite Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. The film was released on March 6, 2020. In January 2020, Louis-Dreyfus signed a multi-year deal with Apple TV+. Under the deal, she will develop new projects for Apple TV+ as both an executive producer and star. The following year Louis-Dreyfus appeared in the Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, which is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though she was originally intended to debut in the film Black Widow (where she appears in the post credit scene). She reprised the role in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), and also appears in the film Thunderbolts* (2025). In 2022 she was a guest on the Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman.
In 2023 she reunited with Nicole Holofcener starring in the A24 independent comedy film You Hurt My Feelings. Dreyfus produced the film and acted alongside Tobias Menzies, Michaela Watkins, Arian Moayed and Jeannie Berlin. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to positive reviews. Peter Bradshaw praised her performance writing, "Louis-Dreyfus is such a superb comic performer that it is interesting seeing her take on something low-key". That same year she portrayed a liberal Jewish mother in the Netflix romantic comedy You People (2023). She also starred in the A24 film Tuesday, directed by Daina Oniunas-Pusić, which premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival.
While at Northwestern University, Louis-Dreyfus met her future husband, the Saturday Night Live comedian Brad Hall. They married in 1987 and have two sons. Their older son, Henry Hall, is a singer-songwriter who has performed on The Tonight Show. Their younger son, Charlie Hall, is an actor. Her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
In October 2010, before the U.S. Senate election in California, Louis-Dreyfus starred in a humorous Barbara Boxer ad regarding energy policy. During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, she supported Hillary Clinton in that year's presidential election. In her acceptance speech at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards, she denounced President Donald Trump's executive order, referred to as the "Muslim ban", as "un-American" and said, "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France."
| Parents | |
| Husband | Brad Hall (m. 1987) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has an estimated net worth of $250 million. Her wealth comes from her successful acting career, including roles in "Seinfeld," "The New Adventures of Old Christine," and "Veep," as well as production deals and voice acting projects. Although she is not a billionaire herself, she is expected to receive a significant inheritance from her father's estate, which could potentially increase her net worth substantially.
Business and Investments
In addition to her acting career, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has ventured into production and has a production deal with Apple TV+. Her company produces content for various platforms, expanding her influence in the entertainment industry.
Louis-Dreyfus graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1983, where she was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority. She studied theatre and performed in the Mee-Ow Show, a student-run improv and sketch comedy revue, before dropping out during her junior year to take a job at Saturday Night Live. In 2007, she received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Northwestern University.
As part of her comedic training, Louis-Dreyfus appeared in The Second City, one of the best-known improvisational theatre groups. It was her performance with The Practical Theatre Company at their "Golden 50th Anniversary Jubilee" that led to her being asked to join the cast of NBC's Saturday Night Live at the age of 21.
Louis-Dreyfus subsequently became a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1982 to 1985, the youngest female cast member in the history of the program at that time. It was during her third and final year on SNL that she met writer Larry David during his only year on the show. David later co-created Seinfeld. Louis-Dreyfus has commented that her casting on SNL was a "Cinderella-getting-to-go-to-the-ball kind of experience"; however, she has also admitted that at times it was often quite tense, stating that she "didn't know how to navigate the waters of show business in general and specifically doing a live sketch-comedy show".
Following NBC's cancellation of Watching Ellie, the media began circulating rumors of a so-called "Seinfeld curse", which claimed that none of the former Seinfeld actors could ever achieve success again in the television industry. Louis-Dreyfus dismissed the rumor as "a made-up thing by the media", while Seinfeld co-creator Larry David asserted that the curse was "completely idiotic." Louis-Dreyfus was interested in the role of Susan Mayer on Desperate Housewives, the role that ultimately went to Teri Hatcher. Instead, Louis-Dreyfus scored a recurring guest role as Maggie Lizer, the deceitful prosecutor and love interest of Michael Bluth on the Emmy-winning comedy Arrested Development, from 2004 to 2005.
In 2009, Louis-Dreyfus was granted the honorary award for Legacy of Laughter at the TV Land Awards. Previous winners had included Lucille Ball and Mike Myers. She was presented with the award by friend Amy Poehler. The following year, Louis-Dreyfus received the 2,407th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 4, 2010, for her remarkable contribution to the broadcast television industry as both an actress and a comedian. Originally, the star was set with Louis-Dreyfus's name spelled incorrectly. It was missing both the 'o' and the hyphen in her last name. The star was corrected and the misspelled portion was removed and presented to her. Celebrity guests at the event included past and current colleagues from throughout her career, including Clark Gregg, Larry David, Eric McCormack, and Jason Alexander.
Louis-Dreyfus is widely regarded as one of the finest comedic actresses of her generation. Jake Coyle of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal said "Few comediennes have both her gift for physical comedy... and vocal precision". According to the journalist Molly Ball, Louis-Dreyfus has played mostly "funny, self-centered women who are compelling despite often being ill-behaved." Louis-Dreyfus said she had turned playing unlikeable people into a career. Ball said: "She has also left an indelible cultural mark, expanding the possibilities for women in comedy–and maybe in politics and public life as well."
Social Network
Julia Louis-Dreyfus maintains a strong presence on social media platforms, often using them to engage with her fans and promote her projects.
The first season was filmed in the fall of 2011, in Baltimore, and the series premiered on April 22, 2012. The premiere episode was met with high praise from critics, particularly for Louis-Dreyfus's performance. The Hollywood Reporter asserted the character of Selina Meyer was her "best post-Seinfeld role" to date and claimed she gives "an Emmy-worthy effort", while the Los Angeles Times contended the series demonstrates she is "one of the medium's great comediennes." Following the success of the first season, Louis-Dreyfus was named by the Huffington Post as one of the funniest people of 2012, asserting that she is the "most magnetic and naturally funny woman on TV since Mary Tyler Moore."
Since December 2014, Louis-Dreyfus has appeared in a series of television commercials for Old Navy. In 2015 she acted in the Comedy Central sketch series Inside Amy Schumer alongside Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette, playing a version of themselves giving advice on aging to Amy Schumer. Dreyfus said of the experience "I started to feel unbelievably paranoid that I was making fun of myself and wondering, was this really happening to me? Like, how meta is this moment in my life? I started to have a kind of soul-searching crisis in the middle of the day. And I didn't know [the other women] well enough to bring it up, so I was just trying to be a good sport even though I was dying a little bit on the inside." On April 16, 2016, she returned to Saturday Night Live serving as host for the third time with musical guest Nick Jonas. During the episode's cold open, she reprised her role of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld.
Louis-Dreyfus emceed the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Joe Biden. She has also published information regarding voting by mail and urged all Americans to vote. Louis-Dreyfus endorsed Representative Karen Bass in the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election, in various social media posts.
Education
Julia Louis-Dreyfus attended Northwestern University, where she studied theater. This educational background laid the foundation for her future career in acting and comedy.
Louis-Dreyfus received considerable critical acclaim for her performance on the show, with Brian Lowry of Variety stating that Louis-Dreyfus broke the so-called "Seinfeld curse [...] with one of the best conventional half-hours to come along in a while." Alessandra Stanley from The New York Times asserted that Louis-Dreyfus's performance on the series proved she is "one of the funniest women on network television." Louis-Dreyfus also earned the 2006 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her performance in the first season. Referring to the curse, she stated in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses, but curse this, baby!" Throughout the course of the series, she received five consecutive Emmy Award nominations, three consecutive Satellite Award nominations, two Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, and a nomination for a Golden Globe Award. In 2007, she also received two nominations for a People's Choice Award due to her return to popularity, thanks to the success of Old Christine.
As of 2017, she holds the record for the most Primetime Emmy awards as an actor for the same role and is tied with fellow Northwestern University alum Cloris Leachman for the most acting Primetime Emmy awards (with eight). She has also been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning one for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film for her role as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld (1995).
