Jan Hooks, Decatur Native and 'Saturday Night Live' Star, Dies

Former “Saturday Night Live” and “Designing Women” star Jan Hooks, a Decatur native, died Thursday at age 57.

A cause of death has not been released.

According to IMDB.com, Hooks was a main cast member of “Saturday Night Live” from 1986-91, working with Mike Myers, Phil Hartman, Kevin Nealon and Dana Carvey.

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Hooks’ memorable SNL characters included former TV evangelist Tammy Faye Baker, Kathie Lee Gifford, Sinéad O’Connor, and one of the untalented lounge singers, the Sweeney Sisters.

“That show changed my life,” Hooks said in the book Live From New York, an history of “Saturday Night Live,” Rolling Stone magazine reports.

Later she was a cast member of “Designing Women” and “3rd Rock From the Sun.”

As a teen-ager, she left Decatur for Fort Myers, FL. Hooks developed an interest in comedy when she returned to Atlanta in 1979 and met Bonnie and Terry Turner of the Wit’s End Players, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Turners became writers at “SNL” while Hook was there and creators of the sitcoms “3rd Rock of the Sun” and “That 70s Show.”

“She was one of my closest, dearest friends and certainly one person who was with me in good times and bad, for both of us,” Tush texted the AJC.

Hooks was also in feature films including, Tina (the Alamo girl) in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), and Dixie Glick in Jiminy Glick in Lalawood, IMBD reports.