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Arleen Sorkin (born October 14, 1956 in Washington, D.C.) is an American comedienne, actress, screenwriter, presenter, and walker-talker best known for providing the voice of Harley Quinn.
DCAU filmography
Batman: The Animated Series
Feature film
Video games
Superman: The Animated Series
The New Batman Adventures
Gotham Girls
Static Shock
Feature film
Justice League
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Background information
A singer, actress, and comic, Sorkin is probably best known as the wacky but lovable recurring character of Calliope Jones on the daytime soap opera Days of our Lives. She also co-wrote a segment of the episode "Love Disconnection" of Tiny Toon Adventures, the other segment of which was written by Paul Dini. The two became close friends, and Dini created the character specifically for her.
Dini joked that he based Harley's personality largely on Sorkin's, and "[r]emarkably, she still speaks to me."
In a famous scene in the Batman: The Animated Series episode "The Man Who Killed Batman," Harley concludes a mock funeral by performing "Amazing Grace" on a kazoo. The performance was Sorkin's own; the producers just handed her a kazoo and asked her to try it, and she did. According to Dini, it was fortunate that she did it perfectly during the first take, because she and the rest of the cast were helpless with laughter when she'd finished.
Sorkin has reprised her iconic role in the video games Batman: Arkham Asylum and DC Universe Online (alongside Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill as Joker in both cases) for the last time prior to retiring from her career as Harley Quinn.
Sorkin is married to writer Christopher Lloyd (not to be confused with the actor of the same name), an executive producer of the sitcom Frasier (which co-starred Peri Gilpin). Sorkin often played an unsung part in the production of every episode, playing the callers in to the title character's radio show (to be dubbed over later by other actors and actresses in post-production) and didn't appear on-screen until the series finale (as a nurse with a monkey, no less).