Two-time Emmy winner Carol Kane made her professional acting debut in the 1966 play The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Her film debut came five years later in the Mike Nichols movie Carnal Knowledge, and by 1976, she'd been nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Hester Street. She worked steadily in film throughout the 1970s, including a role in the Woody Allen classic Annie Hall, before landing a regular part on the hit TV show Taxi. She played Simka Dahblitz-Gravas, the wife of Andy Kaufman's character Latka, from 1981 to 1983, and won Emmys for the role in 1982 and 1983.

After Taxi, Kane continued to work in both television and film, including a memorable turn in 1987's The Princess Bride. In more recent years, Kane's made guest appearances on shows including Two and a Half Men, Ugly Betty, and Girls. In 2014, she started a recurring arc on Fox's Gotham, and in 2015, she began a regular role on the Netflix original series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock.

Kane has also been active in theater. In 2005, she joined the cast of the first national tour of the hit Broadway musical Wicked as the headmistress Madame Morrible. She reprised the role on Broadway in 2006, in Los Angeles intermittently between 2007 and 2009, in San Francisco in 2009, and again on Broadway in 2013 and 2014. She made her West End debut in January 2011 in a production of play The Children's Hour, costarring Keira Knightley, Elisabeth Moss, and Ellen Burstyn, and in 2012, appeared on Broadway in the play Harvey.