Born Catherine Louise Sagal on Jan. 19, 1954, into a show business family the Brentwood, CA native of Russian and German descent was the daughter of noted film and television director Boris Sagal and Sara Zwilling, one of Hollywood’s first female assistant directors, as well as a singer and former beauty queen. Sagal was the second oldest of five children, a brood which included older brother David, an entertainment lawyer; younger brother Joey, an actor; and twin sisters Liz and Jean, actresses and eventual television writers/producers who starred on the short-lived NBC sitcom “Double Trouble” (1985).

A singer since early childhood, Sagal’s penchant for performing led her to enroll in the California Institute for the Arts in the fall semester of 1971, where she studied acting and singing until the following June. In 1973, she went on a yearlong tour with a musical production of Shakespeare’s “Two Gentleman of Verona,” acting and bunking alongside actress and fellow future sitcom mother Joanna Kerns. Upon her return to Los Angeles, Sagal discovered that her mother was in the advanced stages of heart disease, and when Zwilling passed away shortly thereafter, Sagal took a local job waiting tables at The Great American Food and Beverage Company. While there, she and four co-workers decided to form the band The Group with No Name, and on a fateful night waiting on an old classmate of one of her bandmates, KISS bassist Gene Simmons, led the band to an introduction with music executive Neil Bogart. Bogart signed the group to his Casablanca Records imprint, which released its one and only album, Moon Over Brooklyn, in 1976. The band did not last beyond its debut album, but Simmons was impressed enough with Sagal to utilize her backing vocals on his first, self-titled solo album, released in 1978 at the peak of KISS fame. That same year, Sagal also found a personal accompaniment to her professional credits with a marriage to bass player Freddie Beckmeyer.

Among the growing list of artists also impressed with Sagal’s talents were Bob Dylan and Bette Midler. Dylan would utilize her vocal abilities for a six week period in 1978 before deciding to let much of his band go just prior to heading out on tour. Around this time, singer/actress Midler, fresh off her performance in the acclaimed feature film “The Rose” (1979), was looking for female vocalists to join her touring backup trio, The Harlettes, for a major international tour. Sagal won one of the three slots, beating out well over 200 possible candidates. She performed on the entire tour which ended in November, 1978, but opted not to accompany Midler on her subsequent “Divine Madness” stint. Divorced from Beckmeyer in 1981, Sagal did, however, return to The Harlettes for Midler’s “De Tour,” which started in 1982 and carried on into 1983. Sagal also managed to do a backing vocal turn on the track “Soda and a Souvenir” from Midler’s 1983 No Frills album. Finding a comfortable niche as a backup singer, Sagal would also serve in that capacity from the early 1980s onward, singing behind the likes of Tanya Tucker, Etta James Olivia Newton-John and rockers Molly Hatchet, among others.

The year 1985 would find Sagal returning to acting back in Los Angeles. A lauded stage performance in “The Beautiful Lady” landed her an audition for an upcoming Mary Tyler Moore sitcom, simply called “Mary” (CBS, 1985-86). She ultimately won the part of Mary’s sarcastic co-worker and the two struck up a friendship, but the show was short-lived.

The experience was not without its benefits, however, as “Mary” fan and producer Ron Leavitt decided to audition Sagal for a new series he was developing with Michael Moye for Fox called “Married… with Children.” Sagal landed what would become her most famous role – that of the somewhat voluptuous, but crass Bon Bon-eating housewife Peggy “Peg” Bundy. Though she appeared in the films “Maid to Order” (1987), “The Good Mother” (1988) and a 1990 episode of “Tales from the Crypt” (HBO, 1989-1996), the role of Peg Bundy would serve as the main focus of Sagal’s acting career for over a decade. That focus paid off, as her portrayal of the indifferent Bundy matriarch earned her four straight Golden Globe Award nominations from 1991 through 1994.

During the 1991-92 season of “Married,” the producers decided to incorporate an expectant Sagal’s pregnancy into the storyline, but that arc was re-imagined as a dream of onscreen husband Ed O’Neill after Sagal suffered a real-life miscarriage several episodes in. A devastated Sagal and her longtime boyfriend, musician/photographer Jack White, had previously dealt with another miscarriage in 1989. Sagal found married bliss for the second time in 1993 with White, and by August 1994, had birthed a daughter, Sarah Grace, as well as her first solo album, Well…. It would be her first recorded material since performing lead vocals on the song “Loose Cannons” – written for the 1990 film of the same name. She also took on one of her most harrowing acting roles to date as the mother of an abducted child in NBC’s movie-of-the-week, “Trail of Tears. (1995).

Unlike her famous onscreen character, the cancellation of “Married… with Children” in 1997 saw the industrious Sagal eager to segue back into series work. A year earlier, in May of 1996, Sagal had given birth to Jackson James, her second child with White, and opted to take on the voice of Flo Spinelli on the Disney animated series “Recess” (1997-2001). In 1998, she returned to the television movie genre, starring in both The Disney Channel’s “Mr. Headmistress” and CBS’ “Chance of a Lifetime.” The following year, she played a dying mother in CBS’ “God’s New Plan” and added to her credits the voice of Edna Hyde to the hit Fox sitcom, “That 70s Show” (1998-2006). Another Disney telefilm, “Smart House” (1999), followed before Sagal was enlisted to embody the animated character of the purple-haired, one-eyed alien Leela on “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening’s new Fox series, “Futurama.” (1998-2003). By 2000, Sagal and White would divorce, but she would try her hand at two more sitcoms, the short-lived NBC comedies “Tucker” (NBC, 2000-01) and “Imagine That” (NBC, 2002).

In 2003, Sagal would play a much more doting mother – one closer to herself – starring opposite her “Chance of a Lifetime” co-star John Ritter in the ABC comedy “8 Simple Rules for Dating my Daughter” (2002-05), based on the popular book. Cast as Cate Hennessey, the actress played the level-headed wife to an uptight father Paul (Ritter) of two sexually maturing teenage daughters. The show was a ratings winner for ABC in its first season and was poised to become the comedy centerpiece of its 2003-04 schedule, when the critically acclaimed series was forced to take a brief hiatus after the untimely heart failure death of Ritter in September 2003. Despite this tragic setback which rocked Sagal to her core, the show’s cast and crew decided to carry on, resting more of the series on Sagal’s shoulders when it reconvened with a new co-lead, veteran actor James Garner.

As 2004 arrived, Sagal would mark two more personal milestones – releasing her second album Room in June and, in October, marrying for the third time to writer/producer Kurt Sutter. “8 Simple Rules…” made its final on-air bow in April of 2005, but that year was no less productive for Sagal, who appeared in two made-for-television movies, ABC Family’s “Campus Confidential” and USA’s “Three Wise Guys.”

Keeping busy and reinventing her popular persona, in March of that same year, Sagal also put in a dramatic appearance on FX’s groundbreaking and Emmy-winning series, “The Shield” (in an episode her husband had written, “Grave”) and, by October, had made the first of two appearances on ABC’s cult drama “Lost” (2004- ). Sagal also decided to branch out and take some film roles, co-starring in the independent features “I’m Reed Fish” (2006) and “One Part Sugar” (lensed 2006) – the latter featuring her “Mary” director Danny DeVito. She then returned to the much-beloved part of Leela for the full-length animated feature, “Futurama: Bender’s Big Score” (2007).