Ricki Pamela Lake, born September 21, 1968, grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, with her parents and a younger sister, Jennifer. Ricki showed an early interest in performing--at thirteen she was already auditioning for commercials--and transferred to the Professional Children's School in New York City. It was also about then when she began gaining some serious weight. And by the time she started classes at Ithaca College in upstate New York, the five-foot-four-inch freshman had balloned to almost 200 pounds.

Around this time Ricki got a lucky break--her weight actually helped her land plum roles. Trained at various professional schools for youngsters, actress Ricki Lake completed her education at Ithaca. While her excessive weight precluded ingenue roles on stage and screen, Lake enjoyed some success as a cabaret singer and off-Broadway performer; she was also a gifted musician, adept at several intstruments. But while at Ithica, Lake heard about a local audition for an untitled film. After one callback, she landed her debut role and so Ricki's film career began in 1988 as a member of director John Waters' eccentric stock company. She garnered fine reviews for her work in Waters' Hairspray, as the hip, hefty daughter of the drag queen Divine, who wins a place in a local dance program, dancing with camp abandon and winning raves.

After a while, Ricki bought a house in Los Angeles, and her future seemed set. She grabbed some small parts in studio movies, and scored a recurring role on the TV drama, China Beach. But afterwords, she weighed in at over 250 pounds, and offers for parts stopped coming her way. Ricki felt as if she'd hit rock bottom. Her agent wouldn't return her calls. She was stuck taking roles in straight-to-video projects like the cheezoid thriller Skinner for Ivan Nagy. She lost her 3,500 square-foot home and could barely make the $550 a month rent on a guest house in the Valley.

After her "slump" Ricki decided to make a change in her life, a turn for the better, so she started eating smarter, counting down on fat grams and portion size. She permanently banned junk food from her refrigerator so that she wouldn't be tempted to snack. And she added frequent exercise sessions to her daily routine. Slowly and steadily, she began toning up and slimming down. Her restored since of self esteem must of come across in her 1993 audition for a new talk show. After a two-year hibernation, Lake reemerged, having shed nearly 100 pounds, and flirted so effectively at an interview with Ancier and other execs for it that she landed the job. She moved to a modest two-bed-room apartment in Greenwich Village and began to start a major comeback. She beat out other candidates such as Melissa Rivers and supermodel Veronica Webb. It was a major turnaround for her career--but it was only the beginning of her total life makeover. A month after her show first aired, Ricki went to a Halloween party and met the guy of her dreams, illustrator Rob Sussman. Rob got up the nerve to come over to Ricki and start up a conversation. They must have had a lot to talk about because the two ended up ditching the party and going out for a mega romantic dinner. By the time their entrees arrived, Ricki and Rob were crushing on each other in a major way. Ricki called her friend on a payphone and told her this was the guy she was gonna marry before she had even kissed him. Ricki and Rob couldn't keep their hands off each other, and five months later they were married in Las Vegas. These two lovebirds did everything together.

In 1994, Ricki and Rob took part in an anti-fur protest, and they wound up spending a night in jail. Some people accused Ricki of participating in the protest in order to stir up publicity for her show, which she denies. In May of 1995, Ricki started work on the romantic comedy, Mrs. Winterbourne, which is about a woman who falls in love with a dead man (so to speak). Lake's character, 18 year-old Connie Doyle, starts out pregnant and abandoned on a Boston-bound train. She meets another pregnant young woman who is going to meet her husband's parents for the first time. When the train derails, the couple is killed, and hospitalized new mother Doyle, mistaken for the young Mrs. Winterbourne.

Since then Ricki's popularity has risen. With more television and film roles, such as Murder She Purred and another John Waters flick. Ricki added another accomplishment to her list of actress, tv personality, animal activist, sister, daughter, wife and finally mother. Ricki gave birth to a little boy, Milo Sebastion. This year (2001) will be Ricki's biggest as she is in her eighth season of her show, getting some of the best ratings yet, a six-episode stint playing Stephanie on the comedy "King of "Queens," and expecting her second child this summer. Ricki has successfully accomplished every goal she set for herself.