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Harriet Sansom Harris is an unusual amalgam: a supremely cool middle-aged woman with the throaty purr of an old-time noir vixen, and the face of a cartoon squirrel. (Really: the twinkly eyes, the prominent front teeth, the winning dimples in the full cheeks, just waiting to be filled with chestnuts.)

Harris has established her H!ITG!-itude on two fronts. First: several quite memorable character roles.

1. Bebe Glazer on Frasier. (Wily.) It is often the case on Frasier -- or ot was, at least, back when we could stand to watch it -- that the funniest characters (and the ones we like best) are the ones who really piss off the show's insufferable blowhard of a title character. Bebe -- gleefully amoral and venal; she is a talent agent, after all -- is batshit crazy in the most entertaining way. She's seemingly unhinged and loca, but ultimately in complete control, both of herself, and of every situation. Bebe only gave the impression of erratic carelessness because she had already plotted three moves ahead of everyone else. Bebe ruled.

2. Ellen in Nurse Betty. (Wry.) Ellen is a waitress in a bar at which Betty stops on her way from Kansas to Los Angeles. Ellen's attitude toward the deeply confused Betty is not all that different from the audience's attitude to Betty (or to Ren&eaute;e Zellweger, for that matter): Ellen reacts to Betty with a mixture of impatience and indulgence, as one does to someone who is, while quite annoying, also somewhat endearing. Harris infuses Ellen with that kind of world-weary, seen-it-all, impersonal warmth that lifelong waitresses often exhibit. Ellen gets additional cool points for being pretty much the only person in the movie who doesn't buy Morgan Freeman's character's cover story (that he is a law-enforcement officer) and pegs him immediately as a criminal of some kind; and for the bad-ass Bonnie Raitt skunk streak in her hair.

3. Catherine Collins on Six Feet Under. (Wily.) Harris's Catherine Collins is far from being SFU's first or only widow, but she was the first (and only, to date) to be overtly psyched that her husband had died. The late Mr. Collins, we learn, abused his wife, so when he ends up dismembered by the propeller of a small cruise ship, she's not all that broken up about it. In fact, she insists upon seeing her late husband's corpse (or the pieces of it that Fisher & Sons have been able to assemble), over funeral-home personnel's strenuous objections. Then she gets a little hysterical at the sight of his mangled remains and laughs at his...well, "predicament" isn't the right word, but you get the gist; basically, she rejoices -- reasonably enough -- in the gory end of her tormentor. And then she sues Fisher & Sons for inflicting emotional distress upon her, by opening Mr. Collins's casket, per her own request. Ultimately, David talks her out of the suit; she complies with as much hysteria and rage as she had exhibited at the moment she confronted the corpse in the first place. Maybe Mrs. Collins didn't have ever phase of her plan worked out in advance, Bebe-style, but she did share one important attribute with Bebe: craziness in excess of that displyed by a shithouse rat.

But it's not only memorable roles that make an actor a H!ITG!. Being in everything, everywhere, always, also has something to do with it, and Harris has done her time -- hard time guesting on Family Law, Chicago Hope, Sisters, and Diagnosis Murder (among many others), plus short stints in stir ("stir," In this case, meaning "failed sitcoms": The Five Mrs. Buchanans, Union Square, Stark Raving Mad, and the soon-to-fail It's All Relative).

Harriet Sansom Harris is a cool lady. She deserves every last nut she can sock away for winter back in her hollowed-out cartoon tree.