Tina Fey (born
Elizabeth Stamatina Fey; May 18, 1970) is an American
writer,
comedian,
actress and
producer. She has won five
Emmys, a
Golden Globe and a
SAG Award. Fey is best known for her work on
Mean Girls,
Saturday Night Live (
SNL), her impersonation of
Alaska Governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate
Sarah Palin 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. She was promoted to the position of
head writer in 1999. She was 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.
In early 2008, she starred in the movie
Baby Mama, alongside
Amy Poehler. During the final two months of the 2008 presidential election, Fey appeared on
SNL portraying 2008
Republican vice presidential nominee
Sarah Palin.
Biography
Fey was born in
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of
Philadelphia, the daughter of Zenobia "Jeanne" (
née Xenakes),
[Fey revealed on the Rachael Ray show that her mother was born as Zenobia, but the name was changed at school to Jean/Jeanne due to difficulty of pronunciation — hence, Fey's own daughter's middle name is Zenobia.] a
brokerage employee, and Donald Fey, a university grant proposal-writer.
Fey's father is of
German and
Scottish ancestry and her mother of
Greek ancestry.
Fey was exposed to comedy early. She recalls:
{(({cquote|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 among her role models.
Fey attended Cardington Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School.["Tina Fey Gets the Last Laugh", Fox News, April 25, 2004. Accessed November 28, 2007. "Back in the late 1980s, Fey and the other 'AP-class brainiac nerds', as she called her clique, used to sit together in the lunchroom at suburban Philadelphia's Upper Darby High School, making up nasty nicknames for their classmates"]
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.
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 owns a Lexus hybrid. She has also supported humanitarian causes, such as the [[Mercy Corps]] World Hunger Center in New York City.
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.
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:
While in Chicago, she also made what she later described as an "amateurish" attempt at stand-up comedy.
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.
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.
SNL sketches
Some recurring sketches written by Fey include:
She is also credited with:
Weekend Update
In 2000, Fey and Jimmy Fallon became co-anchors of SNL's Weekend Update, a pairing that ended in May 2004 when Fallon last appeared as a cast member. (Fey also was co-writer of the Weekend Update segment). Fallon was replaced by Amy Poehler. It was the first time that two women co-anchored Weekend Update.
Returning host
On February 23, 2008, Fey hosted the first episode of SNL after the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike, becoming the third female cast member to return and host.
Fey's celebrity impressions during the episode included Ellen Page (as Juno MacGuff) and Mary Jo Buttafuoco.
Sarah Palin
Governor of Alaska, and former Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin is considered to have a striking resemblance to Tina Fey,
In an interview, SNL creator Lorne Michaels said "The whole world cast her in that role." Michaels said that she was unlikely to remain in the role for long. [Coyle, Jake. "Tina Fey 'likely' to play Sarah Palin on 'SNL'." AP. September 13, 2008.] Palin's campaign said that Palin was amused, particularly because she had once dressed up as Tina Fey for Halloween,
On September 27, she reprised her role as Palin, parodying the CBS News interview with Katie Couric, who was played by Poehler. Portions of the sketch were direct quotes and gestures from interviews with Couric on September 24. On October 4, she played the role of Palin at the 2008 vice-presidential debate, with Jason Sudeikis playing Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden and Queen Latifah as moderator Gwen Ifill. SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels, referring to the 50% audience increase in the 34th season, told the New York Times, “I think the gods smiled on us with the Palin thing.”
New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley wrote that the McCain campaign apparently believes that Fey's comedy sketches have "undermined Palin's plausibility" as a candidate qualified to be Vice President, and Stanley speculated that the candidate's appearance on SNL was calculated to "disarm" Fey.[On SNL It's the Real Sarah Palin, Looking Like a Real Entertainer, by Alessandra Stanley, October 20, 2008, New York Times]
On the Thursday, October 23 episode of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday, Fey as Palin appeared alongside John McCain (played by Darrell Hammond), as President George W. Bush (played by Will Ferrell) gave his endorsement to the pair.
On Saturday, November 1, Fey appeared with Senator McCain himself in a skit that mocked the McCain campaign's lack of funds. The skit featured McCain and Fey on the set of QVC, just a few days after Barack Obama bought time on the major television networks. Items advertized during the skit included an "Ayers Freshener," which Fey thought would remind people of Bill Ayers, a set of McCain-brand pork knives, a set of 10 white "Town Hall Debate plates," commemorating the 10 town hall meetings that never happened, McCain "Fine Gold Jewelry" (alluding to the McCain-Feingold Act on Campaign Reform) presented by Cindy McCain, as part of the Washington Outsider Jewelery Extravaganza, "Palin in 2012" t-shirts, and "limited-edition Joe Action Figures," including Joe the Plumber, Joe Six Pack, and a talking Joe Biden.
On November 5, 2008, Fey told reporters she was retiring her impersonation of Sarah Palin, in order to focus on 30 Rock.[hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/11/tina-fey-says-s.html?iid=top25-20081105-Tina+Fey+says+she%27s+retiring+Sarah+Palin+impersonation Entertainment Weekly "Tina Fey says she's retiring Sarah Palin impersonation." Armstrong, Jennifer. Nov.5, 2008]
30 Rock
Fey developed a sitcom, 30 Rock, for NBC's fall 2006 schedule.
The show made its debut with mostly positive reviews but weak ratings; ratings improved when NBC moved it to the Thursday night "Must See TV" comedy block. NBC renewed the series for a second season, which began in October 2007.
In July 2007, Fey was nominated for an Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy for her role as Liz Lemon. The show itself won the 2007 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2008, she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical, and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series on January 27.
Along with the rest of the show's writing staff, Fey participated in the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike, which began on November 5, 2007 and concluded on February 12, 2008. While picketing in Rockefeller Center on the first day of the strike, Fey was quoted as saying, "I'm a member of the Guild and I am here to support my fellow Guild members. This strike affects the show in which I work. We put our pens down yesterday, and we will not write until negotiations resume."
The show's third season premiered on October 30, 2008.
Episodes written for 30 Rock
So far, Fey has independently written nine episodes of 30 Rock and co-written four episodes. They are:
Feature films
[fey mean girls.jpg|thumb|upright|Tina Fey at the premiere of her film [[Mean Girls].]]
As a recurring guest on Late Night With Conan O'Brien, Fey had a running gag in which she would plug upcoming films that didn't really exist, substituting the promised clips with intentionally obviously unrelated footage. However, in 2004, she made her feature film debut as writer and co-star of Mean Girls. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Fey's high school life
Fey and former SNL castmate Amy Poehler starred in Baby Mama, released April 25, 2008 and written and directed by Michael McCullers. The plot concerns a business woman (Fey) who wants a child but discovers she has only a million-to-one chance of getting pregnant then decides to find a surrogate, "Angie" (Poehler), a white-trash schemer. The movie had mixed reviews, with a rating of 62% at Rottentomatoes.com, and has made over $60 million dollars to date.
As of April 2006, Fey was working on a script for a Paramount Pictures film by the name of Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill that is said to be based loosely on the true story of a Hasidic rock musician.[Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill (2009)]
Other work
In 2000, Fey partnered with fellow SNL cast member Rachel Dratch in the critically acclaimed
In 2007, Fey was chosen as one of the 100 People Who Shape Our World by Time magazine. She placed seventh on that year's Hot 100 List on AfterEllen.com, a website for lesbian women. She was ranked #80 on the Maxim Hot 100 Women of 2002
Fey appeared as a guest judge on the November 25, 2007 episode of the Food Network program Iron Chef America. She has appeared in Disney's campaign "Year of a Million Dreams" as Tinker Bell, along with Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan and Gisele Bündchen as Wendy Darling [Celebrity Photos Show Where Dreams Come True from the Disney Parks & Resorts website within Go.com]. She has also done commercials for American Express credit card
