Born in New York and raised in Vermont, actress Elizabeth Perkins headed for Chicago after high school. There Elizabeth Perkins was trained at the Goodman School of Drama. In a busy three-year period (1984-1987), Elizabeth Perkins co-starred in the touring company of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, married Chicago-based actor Terry Kinney (they have since split), was featured on Broadway, and made her film debut in About Last Night... (1986).

Elizabeth Perkins went on to play Tom Hanks' vis-?-vis in Big (1988), the terminal cancer patient with whom William Hurt begins a relationship in The Doctor (1992), and the "She" to Kevin Bacon's "He" in He Said, She Said (1991). The biggest box-office hit with which Elizabeth Perkins has been associated was 1994's The Flintstones. Here Elizabeth Perkins portrayed the long-suffering Wilma.