Born Teri Lynn Hatcher on December 8, 1964, in Sunnyvale, California. She experienced a career renaissance as the sweet, but clumsy Susan Mayer on the hit comedy series Desperate Housewives. She got her start in the entertainment industry as a cheerleader for the football team the San Francisco 49ers in 1984.

Next up for Hatcher was a role as a mermaid dancer on the popular television show The Love Boat. This led to a recurring role on the action-adventure series MacGyver starring Richard Dean Anderson. She made her film debut in The Big Picture (1989) directed by Christopher Guest. Hatcher continued making movies and television appearances, most notably in Soapdish (1991) with Kevin Kline and Sally Field.

In 1993, Teri Hatcher took on the classic comic book and film character, journalist Lois Lane, in Lois & Clark—The New Adventures of Superman. Starring opposite Dean Cain in the dual role of the man of steel and Clark Kent, she became part of a television super couple. Fans of the show watched the complicated romantic situation unfold as the series progressed, with Lois in love with Superman, not knowing that he is actually Kent. In the true comic book tradition, they also tuned in to see the battle between good and evil as Superman worked to save the city of Metropolis from the likes of bad guys like Lex Luthor.

Even before the series ended in 1997, Teri Hatcher made an effort to branch out from Lois Lane's good girl image. She took a dark turn in Two Days in the Valley (1996) as a woman who wants her ex-husband dead. Hatcher then took another iconic part—the love interest of James Bond in the 1997 installment of the series Tomorrow Never Dies with Pierce Brosnan.

As the new millennium began, Teri Hatcher’s career seemed to be slowing down. She appeared in Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids (2001), but was largely known for a series of commercials for a chain of electronics stores