Alexandrea Borstein (born February 15, 1971) is an American actress, writer, producer, and comedian. She is known for voicing Lois Griffin on the animated comedy series Family Guy (1999–present), for which she received a Primetime Emmy Award from multiple nominations. Borstein also had lead roles as various characters on the sketch comedy series MADtv (1997–2009), Dawn Forchette in the medical comedy series Getting On (2013–15), and Susie Myerson in the historical comedy-drama series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–present), the latter of which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award. She had supporting roles in numerous films, including The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), Catwoman (2004), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), Dinner for Schmucks (2010), Ted (2012), ParaNorman (2012), and A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014). She spent her childhood in Deerfield, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, before moving with her family to Northridge, California, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. She graduated from Chatsworth High School in 1989. Borstein is a graduate of San Francisco State University, where she studied rhetoric. She was trained in improvisational comedy at the ACME Comedy Theatre, near Hollywood, California, and was selected to join the cast of MADtv after being scouted by talent agents. Borstein was also a writer and voice actor for several television shows, including Casper, Pinky and the Brain, and Power Rangers Zeo, before joining the cast of MADtv in 1997 as a featured player, becoming a repertory player mid-season.