Carol Leifer

Carol Leifer is an American comedian, actress, and television writer whose credits include Saturday Night Live (1975), Seinfeld (1989), The Larry Sanders Show (1992), and Modern Family (2009), along with multiple Academy Awards ceremonies, and she won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2024 as a producer of Hacks (2021); the Seinfeld character Elaine Benes was partly inspired by her friendship with Jerry Seinfeld. After a marriage to a man and years of heterosexual relationships, she realized she was a lesbian at 40 when she met Lori Wolf, her longtime partner whom she married in 2015 and with whom she raised a son. Her memoir When You Lie About Your Age, the Terrorists Win (2009) discusses her coming out and finding her truest self later in life, and Leifer has spoken candidly about how coming out transformed her comedy and her sense of personal freedom, with her stand-up drawing warmly on same-sex marriage, Jewish identity, and later-in-life self-discovery.