SNL and early film roles (2000–2010)

Wiig relocated to Los Angeles to act while working odd jobs to support herself.^[13][14] She performed with Empty Stage Comedy Theatre^[15] and The Groundlings.^[16] She felt improvisation was a better fit than acting, and being a part of the comedy group improved her skills.^[17] In 2003, she appeared in Spike TV's The Joe Schmo Show, a spoof of reality television, in which she portrayed Dr. Pat, a quack marriage counselor. She auditioned for Mad TV.^[18] While at The Groundlings, Wiig's manager encouraged her to submit an audition tape to Saturday Night Live. She played the Target Lady on part of her audition tape.^[19] She debuted on SNL shortly into season 31, on November 12, 2005.^[2] She survived an SNL budget cut^[20] and became a full cast member at the beginning of season 32 in 2006.

Wiig at an event for the 2008 Time 100

She was nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her work on SNL (2009 to 2012).^[21] Wiig headlined the 2009 Christmas special SNL Presents: A Very Gilly Christmas, featuring new sketches with her character Gilly and highlights of older SNL clips. She was featured in Entertainment Weekly's list of 15 Great Performances for her various impersonations on SNL^[22] (December 2008) and in EW's list of the 25 Funniest Women in Hollywood (April 2009).^[23] She voiced Lola Bunny in the series The Looney Tunes Show from 2011 to 2014.

Wiig made her film debut in the 2006 Christmas movie Unaccompanied Minors, and appeared in Judd Apatow's 2007 comedy Knocked Up as a passive-aggressive assistant. She also performed in Jake Kasdan's Walk Hard, another Apatow-produced film. Between 2008 and 2010, she had supporting roles in several studio comedies which had various degrees of success. She made a cameo appearance as Bear Trainer Girl in the 2008 comedy Semi-Pro, reuniting with SNL alum Will Ferrell. She played a yoga instructor in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and a self-involved surgeon in David Koepp's Ghost Town.

Wiig co-starred in Greg Mottola's 2009 coming-of-age dramedy Adventureland, voiced a beaver mom in the animated adventure film Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, played a roller derby competitor in Whip It (Drew Barrymore's directorial debut) and appeared as the wife of a flavoring-extracts company owner in Mike Judge's Extract. She had a brief role in Andrew Jarecki's 2010 drama All Good Things, starred opposite Will Forte and Ryan Phillippe in MacGruber, and voiced two big-budget animated films, Despicable Me and How to Train Your Dragon, that kicked off two highly profitable film franchises.^[24][25]

Breakthrough (2011–2016)

2011 was a turning point in Wiig's career. The comedy Bridesmaids, which she wrote with fellow Groundlings performer Annie Mumolo, was released that spring by Universal Pictures to critical acclaim, making US$167 million in North America and US$280 million worldwide.^[26][27] In her top-billed role, she played a single woman suffering a series of misfortunes after being asked to be her best friend's maid of honor. The New York Times wrote: "A lanky-limbed blonde who evokes Meg Ryan stretched along Olive Oyl lines, Ms. Wiig keeps her features jumping and sometimes bunching. She's a funny, pretty woman, but she's also a comedian, and she's wonderfully confident about playing not nice [...] Ms. Wiig, a longtime cast member of Saturday Night Live, and Ms. Mumolo, a veteran of the Los Angeles comedy troupe the Groundlings, know what female moviegoers want: honest laughs with, and not solely about, women".^[28] For her work in the film, Wiig was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Her last 2011 film was the romantic comedy Friends with Kids, where she played one half of a sex-obsessed couple, opposite Bridemaids collaborator Maya Rudolph. It received positive reviews, who deemed it "sharp, shrewd, and funny",^[29] and was a success in limited release.^[30]

In the 2010s, Wiig was a prominent figure in Hollywood, acting in leading and supporting roles. The little-seen dramedy Revenge for Jolly!, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was her first 2012 release. In the comedy Girl Most Likely, she headlined opposite Annette Bening as a playwright who stages a suicide in an attempt to win back her ex, only to wind up in the custody of her gambling-addict mother. Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 20% rating based on 85 reviews, with the site's consensus: "Largely witless and disappointingly dull, Girl Most Likely strands the gifted Kristen Wiig in a blandly hollow foray into scattershot sitcom territory."^[31]

Her final performance as a cast member on Saturday Night Live was season 37, episode 22, which aired on May 19, 2012^[32] and was hosted by Mick Jagger. The closing celebration of her time on the show included SNL alumni Amy Poehler, Chris Kattan, Chris Parnell, Will Forte, and Rachel Dratch, as well as Steve Martin and Jon Hamm. She has since returned to host the program several times.^[33]

Wiig at the Sydney premiere of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in 2013

Wiig again provided her voice for Despicable Me 2, released in June 2013, and for the character of Sexy Kitten in the critically acclaimed sci-fi romantic drama Her (2013). She portrayed the love interest and co-worker of the titular character in the adventure dramedy The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (also 2013), alongside Ben Stiller and Sean Penn; it polarized critics and was a moderate success. The New York Daily News praised Stiller and Wiig's "sweet, mellow chemistry",^[34] and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone found her to be "lovely, low-key" in the film, which he considered as "uniquely funny and unexpectedly tender".^[35] Her other 2013 film was the comedy sequel Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, in which she teamed with frequent collaborators Will Ferrell and Steve Carell. With Ferrell, she subsequently starred in the six-episode miniseries The Spoils of Babylon (2014), and its fellow-up The Spoils Before Dying (2015) as well as the made-for-television film A Deadly Adoption (2015). While Joshua Alston of The A.V. Club gave A Deadly Adoption a B− and commented that everything in the film is "right visually, and Ferrell and Wiig are close enough to where they should be tonally",^[36] Wiig was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her role in The Spoils of Babylon.

Hateship, Loveship (2014), her next theatrically released production,^[37] was based on the 2001 short story "Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage" by Alice Munro. In it, she played a woman who must move to a new town to begin work as a housekeeper for an elderly man who needs help keeping house. Critics asserted that Wiig's "vibrant performance is almost worth the price of admission—and it has to be, because Hateship Loveship doesn't have much else going for it", as part of a mixed overall response.^[38] In 2014, she also reprised her role in How to Train Your Dragon 2, and starred with Bill Hader in Craig Johnson's dramedy The Skeleton Twins, as estranged twins reuniting with the possibility of mending their relationship. The Skeleton Twins was an arthouse success,^[39] with the Globe and Mail remarking: "Johnson's unfussy direction serves as a fine showcase for the two SNL veterans to demonstrate how their comic shorthand plays equally well in a slightly darker register".^[40]

For singer-songwriter Sia's performance of her 2014 single "Chandelier" at the 2015 Grammy Awards, Wiig danced alongside child dancer Maddie Ziegler.^[41] The dramedy Welcome to Me was released in selected theaters in May 2015, to a positive critical response; in it, Wiig played a multi-millionaire with borderline personality disorder who uses her newfound wealth to write and star in an autobiographical talk show. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus was: "A transfixing central performance by Kristen Wiig holds Welcome to Me together and compensates for its uneven stretches."^[42] In her next film, another dramedy titled The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Wiig starred as a woman whose boyfriend starts a sexual relationship with her daughter. Like Welcome to Me, the film received a limited theatrical release and was favorably received by critics.^[43] In 2015, she also played the director of media relations for NASA in the successful sci-fi drama The Martian, opposite Matt Damon, and starred as a family practitioner who is more interested in having a baby than having a boyfriend in the black comedy Nasty Baby, directed by Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Silva.^[44]

In the comedy Zoolander 2 (2016), Wiig took on the role of a villain and the "Queen of Haute Couture", alongside Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell. For the outrageous look of her character, she revealed that she spent around eight hours applying and removing her look each day.^[45] Zoolander 2 was a critical and commercial flop.^[46] The much criticized all-female reboot Ghostbusters (also 2016) featured Wiig as an author who bands with other paranormal enthusiasts to stop an otherworldly threat.^[47] and budgeted at over US$140 million, it made US$229 million.^[48][49] In 2016, she also voiced a hot dog bun in the animated comedy Sausage Party, and played a woman planning a robbery in Masterminds.

Later roles (2017–present)

In 2017, Wiig provided her voice for Despicable Me 3 and appeared in the film Downsizing, reuniting with Damon.^[50] She was scheduled to star in and executive produce, with Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter, a new untitled 30-minute comedy series from Apple and Witherspoon's company Hello Sunshine,^[51] but later withdrew from the project.^[52] She next played the villain Cheetah in Wonder Woman 1984, released in 2020,^[53] and co-wrote and starred in the well-reviewed 2021 comedy Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, appearing and co-writing with Annie Mumolo, for Lionsgate.,^[54] and also played Aunt Carlotta in Netflix film A Boy Called Christmas.^[55]

Film

Television

Music videos

Producer

Songwriting credits