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Kate McKinnon (born January 6, 1984, in Sea Cliff, New York) is an American actress and comedian. To Ghostbusters fans she is best known for playing Jillian Holtzmann in Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), a role she approached with substantial creative input that shaped the character's look, speech, and memorable moments.
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McKinnon plays nuclear engineer and weapons specialist Jillian Holtzmann, one of the four core Ghostbusters in director Paul Feig's 2016 film. Several character details trace directly to McKinnon rather than to the script.
McKinnon designed Holtzmann's distinctive hairstyle herself. The look was not modeled on Egon Spengler from The Real Ghostbusters, despite the surface similarity that some observers noted. Before production, McKinnon asked Feig if she could play the character with a Russian accent, a choice she felt would make the comedy feel more natural to her; Feig declined and asked her to play Holtzmann as herself instead.
Two specific lines in the finished film originated with McKinnon on set. During the Aldridge Mansion Museum sequence, she added Holtzmann's question about "the world's tiniest bowtie." Near the end of the film, during the toast at the TGI Fridays Restaurant, she added the reference to physics in Holtzmann's speech.
Her stunt double on the production was Meredith Richardson.
McKinnon is also thanked by name in the acknowledgments section (page 215) of the tie-in book Ghosts from Our Past: Both Literally and Figuratively: The Study of the Paranormal, published by Three Rivers Press.
The IDW Publishing comic series Ghostbusters: Crossing Over includes a small tribute to McKinnon in Issue #3. On page 16, panel 4, the POV display of Holtzmann's Ecto Goggles shows two Easter eggs: the string "01061984" (McKinnon's birth date, January 6, 1984) and the initials "KM."
McKinnon was a cast member of Saturday Night Live from 2012 to 2022, the platform that established her national profile before the Ghostbusters film. Other notable credits include voice work as a featured character in Finding Dory (2016) and the role of Weird Barbie in Barbie (2023). Earlier screen work includes 23 episodes of The Big Gay Sketch Show (2006-2010).
