Mary Walsh
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- For the American television producer, see Mary Walsh (journalist).
Mary Cynthia Walsh, CM, LL.D (h.c.) (born May 13, 1952, St. John's, Newfoundland) is an actress and comedian.
Walsh had a difficult childhood with alcoholic parents and studied at a strict convent school. She studied theatre in Toronto at Ryerson University, but dropped out to work with the CODCO comedy troupe on a series of comedic stage shows, which eventually evolved into a sketch comedy series.
The CODCO series ran from 1987 to 1992 on CBC Television.
In 1992, she began to work with former co-star Rick Mercer and former CODCO co-stars Cathy Jones and Greg Thomey to create a new television series, called This Hour Has 22 Minutes. The show would be a parody of the nightly news and would poke fun at Canadian and international politics. 22 Minutes received strong ratings during its earlier seasons and Mary's character of Marg Delahunty, became famous for grilling politicians. Usually Marg Delahunty would recite a scripted piece intended to humiliate the politician, often by providing criticism and "grandmotherly" advice. Sometimes Marg appeared as "Marg, Princess Warrior", a parody of Lucy Lawless' fictional "warrior princess" Xena,
In the mid-1990s, Mary openly admitted to being an alcoholic and that her 22 Minutes co-star and now close friend, Cathy Jones, helped her seek treatment. She took several months off from 22 Minutes to take part in Alcoholics Anonymous.
In 2001 Rick Mercer left 22 Minutes, and rumours circulated that it was due to a long-standing feud between he and Walsh. Walsh also allegedly rolled her eyes during an interview about Mercer's show Rick Mercer Report, which some see as further evidence of the feud.
In 2004, Walsh hosted a segment on the CBC documentary series The Greatest Canadian, where she championed the case for Sir Frederick Banting (the Nobel prize-winning inventor of insulin) as the greatest Canadian who ever lived.
She is currently taking a one-year sabbatical from the show to pursue movies and Mary Walsh: Open Book, the CBC program she created in 2003.
Besides TV acting, she has worked on movies such as Mambo Italiano, Rain, Drizzle and Fog, Buried on Sunday, The Divine Ryans and Violet.
Mary created her own show called Hatching, Matching and Dispatching in 2005, which was picked up by CBC for the 2006 season.
Walsh has a son, Jesse Cox, born in 1989. She married Donald Nichol in 2002.
Mary suffers from macular degeneration, a disease that has rendered her left eye almost blind.
[edit] Honours
She won Best Supporting Actress at the Atlantic Film Festival in 1992 for her performance in Mike Jones' Secret Nation.
In 1993 Walsh was chosen to deliver the prestigious Graham Spry lecture which was broadcast nationally on CBC Radio.
In 1994, Walsh addressed the United Nations Global Conference on Development in New York. She has also served as a spokesperson for Oxfam Canada's human rights campaign.
On November 04, 2006 Mary and Ed MacDonald picked up a Gemini Award for the best writing in a comedy or variety program for their work in Hatching, Matching and Dispatching
