Lee Garlington

Ann Leslie "Lee" Garlington (born July 20, 1953) is an American actress. Garlington was born in Teaneck, New Jersey. She has guest starred in a number of notable television series, including The West Wing, 7th Heaven, 8 Simple Rules, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Judging Amy, Will & Grace, Matlock, L.A. Law, The Practice, Quantum Leap, Home Improvement, Boston Legal, Roseanne, Get a Life, Profiler, Medium, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lie to Me and among other series. She also played the part of Kirsten, Rose Nylund's (Betty White) daughter in the final season of The Golden Girls and Ronni, the mistress of Joey Tribbiani's father on Friends. From 2002 to 2005 She had a recurring role as Brenda Baxworth on Everwood. She was one of the stars of the series Lenny. She also appeared in the sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Psycho II in 1983 and its successor, Psycho III in 1986. The same year she starred alongside Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen in the action/thriller Cobra. In the 1992 film Sneakers she played Dr. Elena Rhyzkov, a Czechoslovakian mathematics scientist, in a scene with Robert Redford. Garlington was originally intended for the lead female role in Seinfeld. She was the female regular in the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles", playing the waitress Claire at Pete's Luncheonette. When the series was picked up, however, it was decided that having the female lead be from such a different social status compared to the rest of the cast would be unworkable, so the role of Claire was written out and replaced by Elaine Benes. On the September 2, 2011 episode of Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, and on the Julia Louis Dreyfus documentary on the season seven DVD, Jason Alexander (George Costanza from Seinfeld) stated that Garlington made certain unwelcome suggestions to show co-creator Larry David and that her role was dropped because of her suggestions. Garlington would not appear in any further episodes of Seinfeld.