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Miss Piggy is a Muppet character primarily played by Frank Oz. In 2001, Eric Jacobson began performing her, although Oz has not been officially replaced. In the Jim Nabors episode of The Muppet Show, Kermit the Frog briefly reveals that Miss Piggy's second name is Lee, a homage to the actress and singer Peggy Lee. (Incidently, in another episode of The Muppet Show she revealed her first name to be Pigathia) However, this is the only time (apart from various magazine articles and a Muppet book) that a character calls her Piggy Lee. Furthermore, in the Avery Schreiber episode, Miss Piggy "allows" Avery to call her by her real name "Pigathius". Thus, Miss Piggy's real full name is Pigathius Lee.
Miss Piggy was reportedly inspired by the actress Loretta Swit.
She began as a minor character in The Muppet Show TV series, but gradually developed into one of the central characters of the show.
She is a pig who is absolutely convinced she is destined for stardom and nothing is going to stand in her way. Her public face tries to be the soul of feminine charm, but can instantly fly into a violent rage whenever she thinks she's insulted or thwarted. Kermit the Frog has learned this all too well since he is the usual target for her karate chops. When she isn't sending him flying through the air, she is often smothering him in (unwanted) kisses.
The first draft of the puppet was a blonde, beady-eyed pig who appeared briefly in the 1975 pilot special, "The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence," in a sketch called "Return to Beneath the Planet of the Pigs." She was unnamed in that show, but by the time "The Muppet Show" began in 1976, she was recognizably Miss Piggy -- sporting large blue eyes, wearing a flowing white gown, and jumping on Kermit, the love of her life. The fact that she was intended to be a bit player is reflected in her formulaic name, which was patterned after Miss Mousey, Kermit's love interest in the 1974 special "The Muppet Valentine Show."
Miss Piggy soon developed into a major character, as the Muppet creators recognized that a lovelorn pig could be more than a one-note running gag. Frank Oz has said that while Fozzie Bear is a two-dimensional character, and Animal has no dimensions, Miss Piggy is one of the few Muppets to be fully realized in three dimensions.
In an interview with the New York Times in 1979, Frank Oz outlined Piggy's biography: "She grew up in a small town; her father died when she was young and her mother wasn't that nice to her. She had to enter beauty contests to survive, as many single women do. She has a lot of vulnerability which she has to hide, because of her need to be a superstar."
In The Muppet Movie she has just won such a contest (Miss Bogen County) when she first meets Kermit and joins the Muppets.
Eventually in the films, Kermit started returning her affections and (unwittingly) married her in The Muppets Take Manhattan—although subsequent events suggest that it was only their characters in the movie that married, and that their relationship is really the same as ever.
Miss Piggy has a pet poodle, Foo-Foo.
Miss Piggy recently starred in the TV-movie "The Muppets' Wizard of Oz," appearing as all four witches.