Cheryl Hines is an unusually good listener on screen, giving unreasonable men enough time to embarrass themselves. We rate her comic steadiness highly, though her smaller body of directing work gives us less to judge.
Fi1m perspective
In Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000), Cheryl Hines lets Larry David keep talking without warning us that a joke is coming. As Cheryl David, she gives his unreasonable behaviour something steady to be measured against, without making the conversation feel arranged for our benefit. We laughed at their disagreements because she makes his unreasonable demands sound like things somebody might actually have to live with. She is an excellent comic actor here, with a clear sense of how much a scene needs from her. Doing more would often make it less funny.
That ease owes something to her Groundlings improvisation background, which helps her respond without tidying away the awkwardness. Susie Essman's Susie Greene provides a useful contrast, bringing a force that Larry cannot simply talk around. Jeff Garlin's Jeff Greene seems comfortably at home in the disagreements. Hines keeps us aware of how far Larry has wandered from reasonable conduct while allowing the exchange to continue. We can see why the series needs these different responses: without them, the quarrels would start to sound much alike.
Her supporting film roles included Jamie Munro opposite Robin Williams in RV (2006), then Becky in Waitress (2007). The latter brought her together with writer-director Adrienne Shelly, whose script Hines directed for her first feature, Serious Moonlight (2009). The confined-space comedy gave her an ensemble to manage, a useful fit for her experience of responding to other actors. For the feature, her approach was to stay close to the script while making it her own.
She also directed the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode Artificial Fruit in 2020, though her performance as Cheryl David remains our firmest reason to recommend the programme. Our reservation is how wearing its repeated quarrels can become, however precisely Hines and her colleagues handle them. Her restraint cannot make every fresh disagreement feel fresh. Take it an episode at a time, and give everyone a chance to recover.
Biography
Cheryl Hines is an American actress and comedian. She is best known for playing Cheryl David, the wife of Larry David, in the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–2024). She also directed the episode "Artificial Fruit" from the tenth season in 2020.
Hines trained with the Los Angeles improv group The Groundlings. Before her breakthrough role she worked as a personal assistant to director Rob Reiner. Her feature directorial debut was the 2009 comedy Serious Moonlight.
She has appeared in films including Along Came Polly (2004), RV (2006), The Ugly Truth (2009) and A Bad Moms Christmas (2017), and in television series such as The Middle (2009) and Hannah Montana (2006).
