After a brief stint in
Washington, D.C., Flanagan moved to
Minneapolis and worked in theater roles and did
stand-up comedy. She was in the comedy troupe Every Mother's Nightmare with
Wayne Wilderson,
Tom McCarthy and
Nancy Walls. In 1996, she moved to Los Angeles with the stage production of
The Bad Seed, which won an
LA Weekly Theater Award for Best Comedy Ensemble. Flanagan's first major voice role in animation was
Piggley Winks in
Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks, for which she was nominated for an
Annie Award in 2005. She was then cast as the title character,
Naruto Uzumaki, in the English dub of
Naruto, and has consistently voiced the kid, teen and adult incarnations of Naruto in all of its properties including
numerous spin-offs and video game adaptations. She also earned an
Emmy Award for
Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for her performance in
Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks in 2006. In 2009, Flanagan provided the voice of Mother Aardvark in the
third installment of
Ice Age film series. Also in 2009, she appeared in
Marc Webb's romantic comedy drama
500 Days of Summer and Justin Tanner's play
Voice Lessons. The following year, she lent her voice to Orangu-Tammy in the animated film
Kung-Fu Magoo. From 2012, Flanagan starred as Terry Perry, principal of the Mission Creek High School in the
Disney XD live-action comedy series
Lab Rats; she was in the show for four seasons until it ended in 2016. She reprised the role again in the 2016 spinoff of the series called
Lab Rats: Elite Force. She also had a recurring role as Connie in the
third and
fourth season of the
Showtime comedy-drama TV series
Shameless (2013–14). In February 2023, Flanagan appeared as Tina in the
ABC sitcom
Not Dead Yet, based on
Alexandra Potter's 2020 novel
Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up. She also provided the voice of Matt Hornsby in
Royal Crackers, which ran on
Adult Swim in April of that same year. == Personal life ==