Rise to Fame
She spent the early 2000s as the secret weapon in Christopher Guest's ensemble mockumentaries. Her turn as dog trainer Christy Cummings in Best in Show didn't make her famous, but it made directors know her name. Steve Carell's wife pushed to cast her in a role written for a man in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Ryan Murphy saw her in it and cast her as Sue Sylvester in Glee. She won the Emmy in 2010. Took about a decade of groundwork to look like an overnight arrival.
In the Spotlight
The Glee tracksuits are in storage, but Lynch hasn't slowed down. She's been hosting the American Weakest Link reboot since 2020, which she also executive produces. Her recurring role as stuntwoman Sazz Pataki on Only Murders in the Building earned her some of her best notices in years. She keeps one foot in theater, returning to Steppenwolf in 2026, and tours an annual holiday show with Kate Flannery that cracked Billboard's Top 10 Adult Contemporary chart. The character actor who played the villain is still the most interesting person in most rooms she walks into.
Side Notes
Her 2013 divorce from Lara Embry cost her $1.2 million over two years plus half the residuals from Glee, Two and a Half Men, and everything else she made during the marriage. She remarried Jennifer Cheyne in 2021, a woman she'd dated in the early 2000s, let go, and then got back years later. The proposal happened while they were shopping for health insurance. She wrote about past drug addiction in her 2011 memoir Happy Accidents. She's also deaf in her right ear, which didn't slow down a character who spent six seasons bellowing across high school gyms.