Melora Hardin as
Jan Levenson Melora Diane Hardin, who was born on June 29, 1967 in Houston, Texas, is the daughter of actor Jerry Hardin and his wife, Diane, an acting manager. At a young age, she discovered her love for acting, and by the time she was 10, launched her acting career by appearing in the series Thunder. Since then, she started working on TV series such as
Friends ,
Gilmore Girls ,
CSI ,
Monk , Cover Me, Little House on the Prairie, Quincy and Love Boat.
On the big screen, Hardin worked on films Thank You for Smoking, The Hot Chick, Absolute Power and Soul Man. In The Rocketeer, she showed off her singing prowess and also sang soundtrack versions of the classics "Begin the Beguine" and "When Your Lover Has Gone."
Hardin has two albums, The Melodrama and Purr, which both could be purchased through her website of mail order.
Aside from acting and singing, Hardin has also engaged in directing, as she handled the one-woman show, Strip Search, which had a critically acclaimed run at the ACME Comedy Theater in Los Angeles.
In 2005, Hardin was cast as Jan Levinson in the highly watched The Office on NBC. She said of her character, "I think that Jan is a pretty complex character in the sense that she has all these defense mechanisms that she has put up; she is very corporate, and she's really learned how to survive in a man's world, so she's got this very tough exterior. But inside, I describe her as having a soft caramel center."
The actress also talked about her character's relationship with Michael Scott, played by Steve Carrell. She said, "I think that Michael is one of the very few people in her life who sees all those walls and doesn't get scared and intimated and backs off. Instead, he comes barreling in like a bull in a china shop. And there's something for Jan that's compelling about that. Who doesn't want to be wanted? Even though he's inappropriate and rude and obnoxious and not at all at her level and not right for her in any way, there's something [there] that's kind of unbearably, chemically attractive to her. She gives him a lot of slack because of that, even though she seems like she's not giving him a lot of slack."