In 1974, her junior year, she moved to Fort Myers, Florida area, when her father, a Sears employee, was transferred.

[4] Hooks began her career as a member of the Los Angeles-based comedy troupe the Groundlings and in an Atlanta nightclub act called the Wit's End Players,[5] a continuation of the Dick Van Dyke and Phil Erickson troupe Merry Mutes,[6][7] which also included Joanne Daniels.

In 1985, Hooks met with producer Lorne Michaels about a spot on Saturday Night Live, but was passed over in favor of Joan Cusack.

This time, despite a six-minute audition she called "brutal", she was offered a contract along with fellow new recruits Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Victoria Jackson and Kevin Nealon for the show's 1986–87 season.

[16] She also played famous political wives of the era, including Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Kitty Dukakis, Betty Ford, and Elizabeth Dole,[17][18][19] and did notable impressions of Bette Davis, Sinéad O'Connor, Tammy Faye Bakker, Ivana Trump, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Diane Sawyer.

She had small parts in several other movies, including Batman Returns (1992) as Jen, the Penguin's image consultant during his campaign to become mayor of Gotham City.

Hooks turned down a role in the 2003 television film The Music Man (which went to Molly Shannon) and declined to reprise her SNL sketch "The Sweeney Sisters" with Nora Dunn in a special appearance at Carnegie Hall in 2014.

Hooks's friend Bill Tush speculated that her drinking had made her indifferent toward her career, but also said she might not have wanted more money or fame.

She was given a biopsy and treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, but the tumor was unresponsive to chemotherapy and continued to grow.

[1] The Simpsons episode "Super Franchise Me" memorialized her on October 12, 2014, with her longtime character Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon honored in the credits.

Guest host Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig introduced a tribute in which SNL re-aired a short she had filmed with Phil Hartman in 1988, "Love Is a Dream".

It is described as "a sweet and melodramatic tribute to the 1948 film The Emperor Waltz", which was directed by Billy Wilder and starred Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine.

[26] The scene casts Hooks as an aging woman who vanishes into her own imagination to sing and share a dance with a long-lost lover (Hartman).