Beth Littleford

Elizabeth Littleford (born July 17, 1968) is an American actress, comedian and television personality. She is best known as one of the original correspondents on The Daily Show on Comedy Central from 1996 to 2000. Littleford has also appeared in the shows I'm in the Band and Dog with a Blog. Early life Littleford was born in Nashville, Tennessee, the daughter of Jackie, a professor, and Philip O. Littleford, a cardiologist and inventor. She grew up in Winter Park, Florida. Her father and brother died when she was sixteen in a pontoon plane accident during an Alaskan fishing trip. A National Merit Scholarship Program finalist in high school, she attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania for three years before taking up acting classes at New York University; she eventually graduated from The New School for Social Research. Career Early in her acting career, Littleford worked in improvisational theatre with the Chicago City Limits group, founded a sketch comedy troupe, and wrote her own one-woman show, This Is Where I Get Off, which she performed with the Circle Repertory Company. Littleford is perhaps most famous for her pioneering role as one of the original female correspondents on The Daily Show. Littleford's segments on the show were satirical celebrity interviews in the style of Barbara Walters, and used soft focus cinematography for comic effect, in that almost nothing in the interviews were visually discernable to the viewer. Her time on the Daily Show brought her to the attention of fan of the show, actor/producer Michael J. Fox. Fox was the lead, and executive producer of the ABC Sitcom Spin City. Two years after she began on The Daily Show she secured a recurring part of Deirdre West on Fox's show, Spin City. She has also guest-starred on numerous television programs beginning in the late 1990s The West Wing, Family Guy, and Frasier. Littleford was also a celebrity commentator on VH1's I Love the 80s Strikes Back in 2003, I Love the 90s in 2004, I Love the 90s: Part Deux in 2005, I Love the New Millennium and The Great Debate in 2009.