A dark-haired, comic character actress with stage experience, Kathy Najimy played small, outlandish roles (e.g., a crazed video store customer in "The Fisher King" 1991; the observing costume mistress in "Soap Dish" 1991) in several films before her scene-stealing turn as the rotund, maniacally sunny-spirited Sister Mary Patrick in the unexpectedly popular "Sister Act" (1992). She followed up with her role as the obsequious, ever-hungry Mary Sanderson, one of a trio of witches accidentally reincarnated, in the Disney comedy, "Hocus Pocus" (1993) before recreating her religious role in the
