Vanessa Bayer Biography

Vanessa Polster Bayer (born ) is an American actress and comedian best known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live since 2010.

Life and career

Bayer was born and raised in Orange, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. She is the daughter of Carolyn (ne Polster) and Todd Bayer. Her family is Jewish. Bayer graduated from Orange High School in 2000 and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she majored in communications and French, graduating in 2004. Her older brother Jonah is a music journalist and musician who has written for various music and guitar magazines and has appeared as a music correspondent on Fuse TV, as well as being the guitarist for punk band United Nations. She currently collaborates with her brother on the web-series "Sound Advice" for Above Average. Bayer stars as Janessa Slater, a media coach who helps famous musicians change their image.

Bayer fought leukemia as a teenager, after being diagnosed with the disease when she was 15. The Make-A-Wish Foundation granted her wish to send her family on vacation to Hawaii. As a former "Make-A-Wish kid", Bayer continues to do work with the foundation. In 2015 she hosted their "Evening of Wishes Dinner" to help raise funds for wishes for children with life-threatening illnesses.

While attending college, Bayer interned on the television shows Sesame Street and Late Night with Conan O'Brien and participated in the cast of Bloomers, an all-female musical and sketch comedy troupe. Bayer was part of the all-Jewish cast of Second City's stage show Jewsical: The Musical, a musical that presented a comedic take on Jewish life and culture.

Bayer played the role of Kate Clark in the Chicago-based feature comedy Off the Cuff.

Bayer performed improvisational comedy at Chicago's ImprovOlympic, where she trained with SNL castmate Paul Brittain as well as the Annoyance Theatre and Second City.

Saturday Night Live

Bayer joined the cast of Saturday Night Live as a featured player on September 25, 2010. Beginning with the 2012-2013 season, Bayer was promoted to repertory status. She has been praised for her performance on the show, with HitFix calling her "one of the strongest members of the ensemble" and Rolling Stone calling her "Saturday Night Lives secret weapon". In 2014, she was nominated for an American Comedy Award for her work on the show. Following the departure of Nasim Pedrad after the 2013-14 season, Bayer became the longest serving female cast member.

Her recurring characters include:

• Laura Parsons, a child actress always performing roles originally played by adults, including from Forrest Gump, The Wolf of Wall Street, Brokeback Mountain, and Dallas Buyer's Club
• Breckie, a former porn star who creates homemade commercials to obtain free luxury items alongside Cecily Strong
• Rebecca Stern-Markowicz, a co-host of J-Pop America Fun Time Now which celebrates Japanese culture alongside Taran Killam and Jason Sudeikis
• Miss Meadows, an unrealistically perky poetry teacher trying to connect with her delinquent students
• An unnamed director of talk show Mornin' Miami
• Jacob the Bar Mitzvah Boy, who appears on Weekend Update to perform a rehearsed speech (complete with forced jokes) about a given subject

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2009	Off the Cuff	Kate Clark
2010	Stages of Emily	Jocelyn	Short film
2012	Adventures in the Sin Bin	Superdawg Waitress
2013	Despicable Me 2	Flight Attendant	Voice role
2015	Trainwreck	Nikki
2016	Carrie Pilby	Tara	Filming
2016	Office Christmas Party	Allison	Filming
2017	The Polka King		Filming

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2010-present	Saturday Night Live	Various	Series regular
2011	I Wanna Have Your Baby	Connie	1 episode
2013	The Mindy Project	Mary	1 episode
2014	Comedy Bang! Bang!	Susan Armhold	1 episode
2014-15	Portlandia	Various	3 episodes
2015	Man Seeking Woman	Laura	2 episodes
2016	Drunk History	Carrie Nation	1 episode