Alex Borstein is an American actress, voice actress, singer, writer, and comedienne who is well known for her long-running role as Lois Griffin on the animated television series Family Guy, and as a cast member on the sketch comedy series MADtv. A native of Deerfield, Illinois, Borstein is a graduate of San Francisco State University, where she studied rhetoric. She was trained in improvisational comedy at the ACME Comedy Theatre, near Hollywood, California, and was selected to join MADtv after being scouted by talent agents who noticed her work at the theatre. She was a writer and voice actor for several television shows, including Casper, Pinky and the Brain and Power Rangers: Zeo, before joining the cast of MADtv as a featured player, and later as a repertory player in 1997.

As an actress, Borstein made recurring appearances on Gilmore Girls throughout the show's run, first as the harpist Drella. She has also made appearances in such films as Killers and Dinner for Schmucks. She played the school principal in The Lizzie McGuire Movie, the best friend of Halle Berry's character in Catwoman, and an employee at CBS News in Good Night, and Good Luck. She also had an uncredited cameo in the Will Ferrell movie Kicking & Screaming as an obnoxious coffee shop patron. She also had a small role in the movie Bad Santa.

In 2010, Borstein joined the first season staff of the Showtime dramedy Shameless, as a writer and supervising producer. In its second season she held the position of writer and consulting producer. She also guest starred in the first season episode "But at Last Came a Knock", as Lou Deckner. Borstein's production company is called Crackerpants, Inc.