Early life and education
McKinnon was born on January 6, 1984, in Sea Cliff, a village on the North Shore of Long Island, New York. Her mother, Laura Campbell, worked as a parent educator, and her father, Michael Thomas Berthold, was an architect who died when McKinnon was eighteen. Her younger sister, Emily Lynne, is also a comedian and frequent collaborator.1
She showed a strong musical streak as a child, taking up piano at five, cello at twelve, and teaching herself guitar at fifteen, and she discovered a knack for voices and accents in grade school. McKinnon graduated from North Shore High School in 2002 and from Columbia University in 2006 with a degree in theatre. At Columbia she immersed herself in the campus comedy scene, co-founding the musical-improv group Tea Party and performing in the Varsity Show alongside future collaborators. Beginning in 2008 she became a regular performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City.1
Career
McKinnon's first major credit was as an original cast member of Logo's The Big Gay Sketch Show, on which she appeared across the program's run (2007 to 2010). In 2009 she won the Logo NewNowNext Award for Best Rising Comic.1
Saturday Night Live
McKinnon joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player on April 7, 2012, and was promoted to the repertory cast in 2013. She became one of the longest-tenured female cast members in the show's history, holding the record until fellow 2012 hire Cecily Strong surpassed it, before departing at the close of Season 47 in May 2022.1
She is best remembered for her political impressions, foremost her recurring portrayal of Hillary Clinton, along with Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elizabeth Warren, and Rudy Giuliani, as well as celebrity impressions of Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres. Among her original characters were the alien-abductee Colleen Rafferty, the Russian commentator Olya Povlatsky, and barfly Sheila Sauvage. In the somber cold open of the first episode after the 2016 presidential election, she performed Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in character as Clinton. For her final episode she revived Colleen Rafferty, who at last agreed to leave with the aliens and boarded their spacecraft.1
McKinnon received ten Primetime Emmy nominations for the show and won the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2016 and 2017.12
Film and voice work
Alongside Saturday Night Live, McKinnon built a substantial screen career. Her live-action film credits include Sisters (2015), Office Christmas Party (2016), Rough Night (2017), The Spy Who Dumped Me (2018), Bombshell (2019) as Jess Carr, Yesterday (2019), The Bubble (2022), Barbie (2023) as Weird Barbie, and The Roses (2025).1
Her voice work includes Finding Dory (2016), The Angry Birds Movie (2016), Ferdinand (2017), DC League of Super-Pets (2022), Fiona Frizzle in The Magic School Bus Rides Again, and Squeeks in the children's series Nature Cat. On television she starred as Carole Baskin in the Peacock miniseries Joe vs. Carole (2022), which she also executive produced.1
McKinnon has also written for younger readers, publishing the middle-grade novel The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science in 2024 and a follow-up in 2025. In November 2024 she hosted the National Book Awards.1
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016)
McKinnon plays Dr. Jillian Holtzmann, the eccentric weapons and gadget engineer among the four core Ghostbusters in director Paul Feig's 2016 film.2 Several of the character's most recognizable traits trace directly to McKinnon rather than to the script.
McKinnon designed Holtzmann's distinctive swept-up hairstyle herself. Despite the surface resemblance that some viewers noted, the look was not modeled on Egon Spengler from The Real Ghostbusters. Before production, McKinnon asked Feig whether she could play Holtzmann with a Russian accent, a choice she felt would make the comedy come more naturally to her; Feig declined and asked her to play the character as herself instead.
Two lines in the finished film originated with McKinnon on set. During the Aldridge Mansion Museum sequence she added Holtzmann's question about "the world's tiniest bowtie," and near the end of the film, during the toast at the TGI Fridays restaurant, she added the reference to physics in Holtzmann's speech. Her stunt double on the production was Meredith Richardson.3
McKinnon is thanked by name in the acknowledgments (page 215) of the tie-in book Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal, published by Three Rivers Press.4
IDW comics tribute
The IDW Publishing series Ghostbusters: Crossing Over includes a small tribute to McKinnon in Issue #3. On page 16, panel 4, the POV display of Holtzmann's Ecto Goggles shows two Easter eggs: the string "01061984," McKinnon's birth date of January 6, 1984, and the initials "KM."5
Personal life
McKinnon is openly gay and has spoken about how Ellen DeGeneres's visibility helped her accept her own identity. She keeps her private life out of public view and maintains no personal social media accounts.1
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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"Kate McKinnon," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_McKinnon.
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"Kate McKinnon," Britannica, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kate-McKinnon.
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Ghostbusters (2016), Columbia Pictures. End credits, stunt department: "Holtzmann" stunt double, Meredith Richardson.
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Erin Gilbert and Abby L. Yates, with Andrew Shaffer (2016). Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal. Three Rivers Press, New York. p. 215 (acknowledgments).
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Ghostbusters: Crossing Over #3 (IDW Publishing, 2018), p. 16, panel 4. Holtzmann's Ecto Goggles POV display shows the string "01061984" (McKinnon's birth date, January 6, 1984) and the initials "KM."
