Background and career
Mary Gross (born March 25, 1953) is an American actress and comedian known for her four-year stint on Saturday Night Live from 1981 to 1985 and her recurring role as Sabrina Spellman (Melissa Joan Hart)'s favorite teacher, Mrs. Quick in Sabrina, the Teenage Witch from 1997 to 2000. Her credits also include roles on Animaniacs, Boston Legal, That's So Raven and Six Feet Under.
Gross was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1953. She is the youngest of three children born to William Oscar Gross, a tool designer, and Virginia Ruth (née Cahill), a telephone operator (the eldest being actor Michael Gross). She attended Madonna High School—an all-girls Catholic school, since demolished—and Loyola University, where she majored in English. While in high school, Gross made her performing debut—singing, in character, as France's Louis XIV, to the tune of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's "I Feel Pretty"—alongside fellow Madonna alumna Marilu Henner. Gross worked for five years as a secretary for the American Dental Association.
Gross answered an ad for a comedy workshop for the Reification Company, where she went to learn about writing comedy sketches. While there, she ended up performing and soon began performing in local productions. In 1979, she joined the Second City comedy troupe.
Gross joined Saturday Night Live in 1981, during the show's seventh season, which was retooled extensively after the sixth season proved a critical failure. She became co-anchor with Brian Doyle-Murray of the Weekend Update segment (renamed SNL Newsbreak) during her first season. She and the rest of the cast left in 1985 following executive producer Dick Ebersol's departure from the show at the end of the tenth season.
Alfalfa, from SNL's recurring parody of The Little Rascals and skits regarding the murder of Eddie Murphy's Buckwheat character. Siobhan Cahill, an Irish woman who reports on Irish events on Saturday Night News (Weekend Update's name when Brad Hall was cast as anchor). Coincidentally, Saturday Night Live would have Siobhan Fallon and Beth Cahill as cast members in the 1991-92 seventeenth season. Chi Chi, a Hispanic woman who hosts two fake public-access television cable TV shows (The Ghostbusters Show and Let's Watch TV) with her best friend Consuela (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) Celeste, a repressed woman married to an equally repressed man (played by Tim Kazurinsky)
Ann Landers Brooke Shields Ruth Westheimer Nancy Reagan Paul Reubens (as Pee-wee Herman) Eleanor Roosevelt Geraldine Ferraro Harriet Nelson Irlene Mandrell Marilyn Monroe Mary Tyler Moore Jeane Dixon Mary Hart Lena Horne Lisa Coleman Margaret Thatcher Melissa Gilbert Simone de Beauvoir Suzanne Somers Leslie Uggams
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
