Tina Fey

Elizabeth Stamatina Fey, widely known as Tina was born May 18, 1970. She is a Golden Globe-, five time Emmy-, and SAG Award-winning American writer, comedienne, actress and producer. Fey is best known for her work on Saturday Night Live as well as her work on 30 Rock, a situation comedy loosely based on her experiences at Saturday Night Live.

Fey became a writer on SNL in 1997 and she was promoted to the position of head writer in 1999. She was later added to the cast of SNL in 2000. After leaving SNL in 2006, Fey created her own television series called 30 Rock. In the series, she portrays Liz Lemon, the head writer of TGS with Tracy Jordan, a fictional sketch comedy series. She recently starred in the movie Baby Mama, alongside Amy Poehler.

Early life

Fey was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, the daughter of Zenobia "Jeanne" (née Xenakes), a brokerage employee, and Donald Fey, a university grant proposal-writer. Fey's father is of German and Scottish ancestry and her mother Greek American.

Fey was exposed to comedy early, saying:

" I remember my parents sneaking me in to see Young Frankenstein. We would also watch Saturday Night Live, or Monty Python or old Marx Brothers movies. My dad would let us stay up late to watch The Honeymooners. We were not allowed to watch The Flintstones though, my dad hated it because it ripped off The Honeymooners. I actually have a very low level of Flintstones knowledge for someone my age. "

She also grew up watching SCTV and includes Catherine O'Hara as one of her role models.

Fey attended Cardington Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School. By middle school, she knew she was interested in comedy, even doing an independent study project on the subject in eighth grade. She graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1988.

Career

After Fey graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Drama in 1992, she moved to Chicago in order to take night classes at The Second City. Once her Second City training began, she immersed herself in the "cult of improvisation", becoming, as she described it a decade later, "one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this Earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage. Not because of SNL, but because I wanted to devote my life to improv. I would have been perfectly happy to stay at Second City forever."

By 1994, she was invited to join the cast of The Second City, where she performed in the Jeff Award-winning revue Paradigm Lost. Improvisation became an important influence on her initial understanding of what it means to be an actress, as she noted in an interview for The Believer in November 2003:

" When I started, improv had the biggest impact on my acting. I studied the usual acting methods at college - Stanislavsky and whatnot. But none of it really clicked for me. My problem with the traditional acting method was that I never understood what you were supposed to be thinking about when you're onstage. But at Second City, I learned that your focus should be entirely on your partner. You take what they're giving you and use it to build a scene. That opened it up for me. Suddenly it all made sense. It's about your partner. Not what you're going to say, not finding the perfect mannerisms or tics for your character, not what you're going to eat later. Improv helped to distract me from my usual stage bullshit and put my focus somewhere else so that I could stop acting. I guess that's what method acting is supposed to accomplish anyway. It distracts you so that your body and emotions can work freely. Improv is just a version of method acting that works for me. "

While in Chicago, she also made what she later described as an "amateurish" attempt at stand-up comedy. Fey is also a veteran of The ImprovOlympic.

Saturday Night Live

With then-head-writer Adam McKay's help, Fey became a writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1997. By 1999, Fey was SNL's first female head writer, a milestone she downplays in light of the fact that there have not been very many head writers. As co- head writer of SNL's 25th anniversary special, Fey won a 2001 Writers Guild of America Award. She and the writing staff also won a 2002 Emmy Award for their work on the show.

In September 2005, she went on maternity leave after giving birth to a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond. Her Weekend Update role was covered by Horatio Sanz for two episodes before her return to the show on October 22, 2005, at which time she noted:

"I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract; the baby and I only have a verbal agreement."

The season was her last, as she thereafter departed to develop 30 Rock.

On the 34th season premiere episode, aired September 13, 2008, Fey returned to SNL in the role of Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, alongside Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton. Their repartee included Clinton needling Palin about her "Tina Fey glasses". It quickly became NBC.com's most-watched viral video ever, with 5.7 million views by the following Wednesday. The return has been speculated to be temporary, despite the potentially long-term nature of the role, should Palin be elected. Palin's campaign said that Palin was amused, particularly because she had once dressed up as Tina Fey for Halloween, though Palin later said she had seen the sketch without hearing the audio. John McCain aide Carly Fiorina called the skit "sexist". During the 2008 Emmy Awards, Fey seemed to imply that her role as Palin would be more long-term, saying "I want to be done playing this lady Nov. 5. So if anyone could help me be done playing this lady Nov. 5, that would be good for me."

Personal life

Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, a composer on SNL. They met at Chicago's Second City and dated for seven years before marrying in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on June 3, 2001. They have a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond, who was born on September 10, 2005, in New York City.

Fey has a scar a few inches long on the left side of her chin and cheek. Responding to questions about its origin, Fey was quoted in the November 25, 2001, New York Times as saying: "It's a childhood injury that was kind of grim. And it kind of bums my parents out for me to talk about it."

Fey is known as a committed environmentalist and has noted that, apart from recycling, she also drives a Lexus hybrid.

On June 2, 2008, Tina Fey was announced as the "Sexiest Woman in the World" by readers of lesbian/bisexual Web site AfterEllen.com in their Annual Top 100 List.

Awards and Achievements