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Susanna Lee Hoffs (born January 17, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. She, Debbi Peterson, and Vicki Peterson founded the Bangles in 1981. They released their first album All Over the Place on Columbia Records in 1984. Their second album, Different Light, contained the US number two single "Manic Monday" and number one single "Walk Like an Egyptian". The group's third album, Everything (1988), included the US top-ten charting "In Your Room" and number one "Eternal Flame", both written by Hoffs with Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. Following tensions and resentment of Hoffs's perceived leadership, the band split in 1989, reformed in 1999, and released the albums Doll Revolution (2003) and Sweetheart of the Sun (2011). Hoffs appeared in the films Stony Island (1978) and The Haircut (1982), both written by her mother, Tamar Simon Hoffs. She starred in the comedy movie The Allnighter (1987), directed by her mother, which was a commercial and critical failure. Her first solo album, When You're a Boy (1991), was followed by Susanna Hoffs (1996). Neither of the releases proved to be as popular as the Bangles' albums, although they yielded two charting singles in the US, the Top-40 hit "My Side of the Bed", and "All I Want". She later recorded several songs for movies, and formed the faux-British 1960s band Ming Tea with Mike Myers and Matthew Sweet, which performed in all three Austin Powers movies. Hoffs teamed with Sweet to produce three albums of cover songs. Her next solo album Someday (2012) was followed by the cover albums Bright Lights (2021) and The Deep End (2023). Hoffs's first novel, This Bird Has Flown, a romantic comedy about a struggling musician, was published by Little Brown in 2023. It received favorable reviews, and Universal Pictures purchased the rights to the novel for a screen adaptation. Early life Susanna Lee Hoffs was born in Los Angeles, California, on January 17, 1959. She is the daughter of film director/writer/producer Tamar Ruth (née Simon) and Joshua Allen Hoffs, a psychoanalyst. Her family is Jewish. She is the couple's only daughter; they also have two sons: John and Jesse. She has said that her home environment "wasn't really traditional"; that it was an "atheist, intellectual, creative world"; and said that while her mother was religious and kept kosher, her father was secular. Her maternal grandfather, Ralph Simon, was a rabbi in Chicago and her maternal uncle, Matthew Simon, was rabbi emeritus for the B'nai Israel Congregation of Maryland—he marched with Martin Luther King Jr during the Civil Rights movement. Hoffs visited Israel for the first time at the age of 12 to see her grandparents, and she celebrated her bat mitzvah at the King David Hotel. Hoffs learned ballet as a child, and started playing guitar in elementary school, learning chords from her uncle. She attended Palisades High School, and received a bachelor's degree in art in 1980 from the University of California, Berkeley, where she switched majors between dance, theater, film, and art. While in college, she worked as a production assistant and made her acting debut as part of a cast that included Richie Davis, Rae Dawn Chong, and Dennis Franz, in the 1978 film Stony Island directed by Andrew Davis and co-written by Hoffs's mother. With college friends, she attended the final Sex Pistols show at Winterland Ballroom, and a Patti Smith concert which inspired her to pursue a career in music. Early career The Psychiatrists and the Unconscious In the late 1970s, while Hoffs was a student at UC Berkeley, she and then-boyfriend David Roback, a former schoolmate from Palisades High School, formed the duo the Psychiatrists, later changing their name to the Unconscious. In one account, Hoffs said that the short-lived group would perform for 50 minutes, to reflect the duration of "psychiatrists' hours", yet in a 2012 interview Hoffs said that this early group never performed in public. The Bangs There are different accounts of how Hoffs met the other musicians who became the Bangles. Hoffs either posted an ad in a local newspaper and left flyers at the Whisky a Go Go at a Go-Go's concert in search of potential bandmates, or Hoffs answered a similar ad asking for musicians to join a group. In the second scenario, the woman who advertised had previously been in a group with sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson and shared a house with them. Hoffs elected to form a group with the Petersons rather than with the original advertiser, and they started the band in Hoffs's parents' garage in Brentwood, which had been refurbished as an apartment for Hoffs. The band was originally called the Colours, but changed it to the Supersonic Bangs after Hoffs saw an article about 1960s hairstyles in an old copy of Esquire, and subsequently to the Bangs. Hoffs said that the group "liked the double-entendre of the name" and that "you can read a lot into it. There was something kind of gutsy about it". Meanwhile, Annette Zilinskas joined as the bass player alongside Hoffs on rhythm guitar, Vicki Peterson on lead guitar, and Debbie Peterson on drums. The group's musical influences included the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Hollies. Hoffs and the Petersons shared lead vocals. Hoffs remembers the band's first "real performance" was at Laird International Studios where Vicki was a secretary. They played at other venues in Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley, and recorded "Getting Out of Hand", which they released on their own label, Downkiddie in 1981, pressing 1,000 copies. In a 1987 Rolling Stone interview, Susan Orlean described the band's early audiences as "mostly boys, who appreciated their tough-enough music and playfully flirtatious stage presence". Author James Dickerson later characterized the group's loyal audience as "made up of horny high-school and college-age males who relished their in-your-face sexuality", and commented that the musicians had gained their success through their own efforts, without intervention from any man. The Bangles Miles Copeland of I.R.S. Records saw the Bangs at a show and signed them to his Faulty Products label. He had previously signed another group of women, the Go-Go's, whose albums had been commercially successful. In 1982, following a legal claim by another group called the Bangs, Hoffs and her bandmates changed their name again to the Bangles. Meanwhile, Faulty Products folded, and the band's self-titled EP was eventually released on I.R.S. Records in 1982. In 1983, the group was signed to Columbia Records, and Zilinskas left and was replaced by Michael Steele. Meanwhile, Hoffs played a role in the short comedy film, The Haircut (1982), starring John Cassavetes. The Bangles released their first full album, All Over the Place, in 1984 on Columbia Records; it was acclaimed by critics but sold poorly. Their breakthrough was the 1986 single "Manic Monday", written by Prince, which reached number two on the US charts. This single was included o.... Discover the Susanna Harris popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Susanna Harris books.