Kate McKinnon

McKinnon was born and raised on Long Island in the town of Sea Cliff, New York, to Laura Campbell, a parent educator, and Michael Thomas Berthold, an architect. She has a younger sister, comedian Emily Lynne, with whom she has collaborated on the Audible series Heads Will Roll, as well as the digital series Notary Publix. Their father died when McKinnon was 18 years old.

As a child, McKinnon played several instruments. She started playing the piano when she was five years old, the cello at age 12, and taught herself how to play the guitar at 15.

McKinnon's knack for accents began when she was in fifth grade. She auditioned to be "the queen of reading week" and used an English accent. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she says, "I think the genesis of my entire life, probably, was the smiles I elicited doing this British accent. I've been chasing that dragon ever since."

She graduated from North Shore High School in 2002, and from Columbia University in 2006 with a degree in theatre. There she co-founded a comedy group, Tea Party, that focused on musical improv comedy. At Columbia, she starred in three Varsity shows: V109 Dial D for Deadline, V110 Off-Broadway and V111 The Sound of Muses. Her cast and crewmates included future actors Jenny Slate and Grace Parra, directors Tze Chun and Greta Gerwig, and The Onion managing editor Peter Koechley. She was also a member of Prangstgrüp, a student comedy group which set up and recorded elaborate college pranks.In 2007, McKinnon joined the original cast of Logo TV's The Big Gay Sketch Show, where she was a cast member for all three seasons.

Since 2008, she has performed live sketch comedy regularly at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. She has also worked as a voice-over actress, and has voiced characters for series such as The Venture Bros., Robotomy, and Ugly Americans. In 2009, McKinnon won a Logo NewNowNext Award for Best Rising Comic. She was nominated for an ECNY Emerging Comic Award in 2010. In 2014, she appeared in the Kennedy Center Honors as part of a tribute to Lily Tomlin. In 2016, she starred in the reboot Ghostbusters, alongside Melissa McCarthy, and fellow SNL cast members Kristen Wiig and Leslie Jones. In 2023, she played Weird Barbie in the Barbie movie.

McKinnon has made appearances as a voice actress in series like The Simpsons (as Hettie in "Gal of Constant Sorrow") and Family Guy (as Karen / Heavy Flo in season 14, episode 6 "Peter's Sister", and additional voices in other episodes), and films such as Finding Dory, The Angry Birds Movie, Ferdinand and DC League of Super-Pets. McKinnon voiced Fiona Frizzle in The Magic School Bus Rides Again, a continuation of The Magic School Bus children's series, from 2017 to 2020. Since 2015, she has voiced Squeeks in the PBS Kids series Nature Cat, starring with fellow SNL cast members Taran Killam and Bobby Moynihan.