Eden Sher

Plucked from elementary school obscurity by a visiting Jay Leno, the late night talk show host was impressed enough with the charismatic child's flair for comedy to offer her a recurring spot on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (NBC, 1992-2014). Not long after, Eden Sher had few opportunities to look back on her subsequent career, so quickly did she find herself a sought after working actress.

Making the jump from commercials to ensemble roles on television sitcoms and dramas, she impressed critics as an awkward but insightful preteen on the critically-lauded but short-lived NBC series "Sons & Daughters" (2006-07). Sher kept busy with character work on "The Middleman" (ABC Family, 2007), "The OC" (Fox, 2003-07), and on Showtime's award-winning "Weeds" (2005-12), staying with the latter through most of its second season.

Success and a deserved measure of critical affirmation came when Sher joined the cast of ABC's "The Middle" (2010- ), starring alongside Patricia Heaton and Chris Kattan as the hopelessly hopeful middle child of a middle-class family growing up in the middle of nowhere. With this role, Sher put a fresh spin on the exquisite agonies of the average American teenager, proving that desperation and dreams were not mutually exclusive. With critics and fans in total agreement, "The Middle" proved the optimum showcase for Sher to make a name for herself as an up-and-coming talent with considerable comedic chops.

Eden Rebecca Sher was born on Dec. 26, 1991, in Los Angeles. The youngest of three children raised by a single mother school teacher, Sher excelled at performing as early as age eight, when she distinguished herself in local plays and in the chorus of her elementary school. Her natural abilities and innate charisma were noticed by no less than late night host Jay Leno, who had brought his crew to her school to film a segment for "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (NBC, 1992-2014). Sher proved such a hit with viewers that both she and her brother Cosmo became the subjects of a recurring sketch on the long-running talk show titled "Just Ask Eden and Cosmo," in which the siblings fielded questions from the viewing audience.

At age nine, Sher was cast in Jamie Babbit's enigmatic short film "Stuck" (2001), appearing as the spectral Caterpillar Girl, whose appearance complicates the lives of an elderly lesbian couple en route to their regular bridge game. Photographed only from behind or at a distance, Sher spent most of her onscreen time lifeless on a stretch of high desert tarmac, squashed under the wheels of a pickup truck.

In 2006, Sher appeared in eight episodes of "Weeds" (Showtime, 2005-12), starring Mary-Louise Parker as a single mother-turned-marijuana dealer who becomes enmeshed in a drug war. Cast as a middle school love interest for series regular Alexander Gould, Sher's character was confined to the award-winning series' second season and written off at the end of that year. She rebounded with a regular role on NBC's family sitcom "Sons & Daughters" (2006-07). Partly improvised by its ensemble cast, the series featured Sher as Carrie Fenton, a nerdy 13-year-old who uses humor and inappropriate questions to break the tension of her parents' loveless marriage. Looking like a Lynda Barry cartoon come to life, Carrie was a hit with critics but receded to the background after the initial two episodes. Before Sher was given a chance to assert herself in the role, the series was canceled only 11 episodes into its first season.

Sher spent the next year bouncing from one guest spot to another. In the final season of the Fox prime time soap "The OC" (Fox, 2003-07), she turned up as a student of the fictitious and scandal-wracked Harbor High, whose upbeat, can-do attitude was offered in stark contrast to the cynicism of series bad girl Kirsten Cohen (Kelly Rowan). In an episode of the short-lived ABC Family superhero series "The Middleman" (2008), based on the graphic novels by Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Les McClaine, Sher played Cindy, an extraterrestrial agent who inhabits the pig-tailed corporeality of a 14-year-old girl. In the episode's final moments, what appears to series leads Matt Keeslar and Natalie Morales as a scheme to kidnap the world's most popular boy band is revealed to be a mission to save the world from interdimensional villains. Sher clearly had fun with the character, who bows out in a pool of her own green blood, cursing the fate that has taken her out of the game only two weeks from retirement. Sher also contributed vivid character bits to episodes of Rob Thomas' catering comedy "Party Down" (2009-2010) and the Disney channel's youth-oriented "Sonny with a Chance" (2009).

After some false starts in 2008, Sher was given another shot at a regular role on a weekly series with "The Middle" (ABC, 2009- ). Set in a fictitious town in Indiana, the series had been developed as a vehicle for Ricki Lake in 2006 but was headed instead by Patricia Heaton. Looking like a slightly older version of Carrie Fenton, Sher's effervescent but innately hopeless Sue Heck was etched as the problematic middle child of a middle-class American family, whose preternatural clumsiness was balanced somewhat by her invisibility among her peers. Wearing in-character the braces she herself had worn as a preteen, Sher brought to her characterization a mix of awkward and endearing qualities, which the producers wisely played up rather than relegated to the periphery. Although not improvised in the manner of "Sons & Daughters," storylines for "The Middle" benefited from the input of its cast.

The series was at its best when it was most intensely physical, forfeiting wisecracks for pratfalls and demanding aerobic weekly flailing from its principal players. No character was given more punishing and ego-bursting mishaps than Sue, whose attempts to join one school club after another are met with invariable disaster and Job-like trials-by-fire. After only four months on the air, "The Middle" was renewed by ABC. By its second season, "The Middle" had picked up an additional two million viewers, guaranteeing plenty more comic misadventures for its cast in general and Eden Sher in particular.