Jennifer Tilly Bio and Poker Profile

Born in Los Angeles, raised in British Columbia, with Chinese, Irish, and Native American blood in her heritage, and coming from what she has called a "dysfunctional family", Jennifer Ellen Chan was surely destined for an unusual life. 56 years later, Hollywood and poker celebrity @Jennifer Tilly has definitely fulfilled that destiny, making a name (and a voice, one can't help adding!) for herself in both worlds, with 30 years in showbiz, 10 years in live tournament poker, an Oscar nomination and a WSOP gold bracelet in her trophy cabinet.

She was born on September 16, 1958 in Harbor City, CA; grew up with her mother and stepfather in Canada, and went to college in Missouri, where she got a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater.

By 1983 Jennifer had landed her first part in a TV show and took up her mother's maiden name - Tilly - for her career in the movies.

In 1984-1985 Jennifer Tilly appeared as Gina in 6 episodes of the cop drama series Hill Street Blues.

Since then she has accumulated a huge filmography (comprising 110 credits on IMDb!), including Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (1994), for which role she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Yet in a typical self-berating and ironic comment, she herself describes her movie career as 'attending premieres and playing the third lead in B-movies'.

On a personal level, Tilly was married to @Sam Simon (co-developer of The Simpsons and himself a poker aficionado and WSOP regular) for 7 years until their divorce in 1991. In the past decade she has been in a relationship with popular poker pro @Phil Laak and the two have been traveling the live poker circuit and have been iin numerous poker TV shows together, ever since 2005.

2005 was also the year of her dazzling debut in live tournament poker. Her very first recorded cash was a first place prize in the WSOP 2005 Ladies Event, when she topped a field of 601 and captured the single most coveted trophy in poker - a WSOP gold bracelet - not to mention her biggest cash to date: $158,625. Another big win came five years later, in the Bellagio Cup Event 21, when her first place brought her $124,455.

Today, Jennifer Tilly's live tournament resume features 31 ITM finishes and $883,924 in total earnings. No doubt many more lines will be added to her stats page as she is still pursuing the 'elusive dream of poker greatness'. And she still likes to project a 'crazy loose', sexy bimbo image, which has helped her outplay many poker notables.

“The starlet in me dies hard. I always just want to look cute, so I wear a lot of push-up bras and low-cut tops. The thing is, if people are really playing poker, they don’t care. Nothing looks better to them than a pair of aces. They’re not looking at your pair. They’re looking at their pair.”

Throughout these past ten years, poker has been her 'grand obssession', exhilarating and fun, as it has been humiliating and painful. Much of that Tilly has shared in a candid, moving and funny column for Bluff Magazine, where she even tried to say 'Goodbye' to poker in 2008, only to realize some time later: