Laura Kightlinger began her career as a stand-up comic in Boston in 1990. In 1994, she was hired as a writer on the late night NBC staple, "Saturday Night Live." She then moved to Los Angeles and became a writer on "Roseanne" and "Dennis Miller Live," all the while maintaining her on-camera presence by appearing on "Roseanne," "The Nanny," "Murphy Brown" and HBO's "Mr. Show," as well as a number of stand-up comedy shows.

Kightlinger then began a long relationship with the hit series "Will & Grace," where she was a writer/consultant on the show for its last eight seasons and performed as "Nurse Sheila" in multiple episodes.

She has also appeared in numerous hit films, including "Shallow Hal," "Daddy Day Care," and last years' "Kicking & Screaming" and "Must Love Dogs." Laura will next be seen as a prostitute in Brian De Palma's upcoming "The Black Dahlia."

Kightlinger is an author as well. Her book Quick Shots of False Hope, described in the New York Times Book Review as "memorable, disturbing and darkly comic," is a wildly irreverent memoir of Laura's life as an awkward teen raised by her single mother in a lower-income area of Boston.