Ricki Lake

Ricki Pamela Lake, born September 21, 1968, is an American television host and actress. She gained widespread recognition for her starring role as Tracy Turnblad in the 1988 film Hairspray, which earned her a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead. She is also widely known for hosting her internationally broadcast daytime talk show, Ricki Lake, which ran from September 1993 until May 2004.

Lake was born in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, to a secular Jewish family. Her mother, Jill, was a homemaker, and her father, Barry Lake, worked as a pharmacist. She was largely raised by her paternal grandmother, Sylvia Lake, until Sylvia's death in 1978. Before entering the entertainment industry full time, Lake attended Ithaca College for one year.

After making her film debut in John Waters' cult classic Hairspray, Lake appeared in several other projects directed by Waters, including Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, and Cecil B. Demented. Her additional feature film credits include Mrs. Winterbourne, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Cookie, Cabin Boy, and Inside Monkey Zetterland. On television, she joined the cast of the Vietnam War drama series China Beach during its third season as a Red Cross volunteer, and she later secured a recurring role as Doug's sister Stephanie on the sitcom The King of Queens.

When her original talk show Ricki Lake premiered in September 1993, the twenty-four-year-old Lake was credited as the youngest person to host a syndicated talk show at the time. The program featured invited guests and studio audience participation, often focusing on family dynamics and personal topics. She decided to end the show in 2004 after eleven seasons to spend time with her family. In September 2012, she returned to daytime television with a second syndicated series, The Ricki Lake Show, which ran for a single season and earned her a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host in 2013.

Beyond her daytime talk shows, Lake hosted the 2006 CBS limited series Gameshow Marathon and succeeded Sharon Osbourne as host of VH1's Charm School in 2009. She competed on the thirteenth season of Dancing with the Stars in 2011, finishing in third place, and later appeared on competition series including The Masked Singer and The X Factor: Celebrity. In 2022, she launched the podcast Raised by Ricki in collaboration with Lemonada Media.

Lake has also worked as a documentary producer and author. She produced the 2008 documentary film The Business of Being Born, which explored home birth and midwifery, and co-wrote the 2009 book Your Best Birth alongside launching the online social network MyBestBirth.com. In 2018, Lake and collaborator Abby Epstein premiered the documentary Weed the People at SXSW, which examined the medical use of cannabis in pediatric cancer treatment.