Tina Fey

Tina Fey
Fey at the premiere of Baby Mama, 2008
Born	(1970-05-18) May 18, 1970 Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, United States
Alma mater	The University of Virginia
Years active	1994–present
Spouse	[elen degennerss ] (2001–present)

Tina Fey (born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey on May 18, 1970) is a Golden Globe-, five time Emmy-, and SAG Award-winning American writer, comedian, actress and producer. Fey is best known for her work on Saturday Night Live (SNL) 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 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. In September 2008, Fey began making occasional return appearances on SNL portraying Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.

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.

SNL sketches

Some recurring sketches written by Fey include:

• Parodies of Live with Regis and Kelly and The View
• The Girl with No Gaydar, cowritten by Rachel Dratch
• The Boston Teens, cowritten by Rachel Dratch

She is also credited with:

• Colonel Angus, portrayed by Christopher Walken in a sketch filled with word play on the colonel's name
• Mom Jeans commercial
• "Talkin 'Bout 'Ginas" (Parody of The Vagina Monologues)
• "Old French Whore!" (game show parody with teens paired with old French prostitutes)
• "Census" (Tim Meadows questions a clueless Christopher Walken)

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

File:SNL Palin Clinton.png

Web promo for 2008 viral video of Palin (Fey) and Clinton (Poehler) from NBC.com.

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. 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. 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's top economic advisor Carly Fiorina called the skit sexist. During the 2008 Emmy Awards, Fey said of the vice-presidential candidate, "I want to be done playing this lady November 5. So if anyone could help me be done playing this lady November 5, that would be good for me." In an interview with TV Guide, Fey reiterated her desire that her role as Palin will be temporary. "If she wins, I'm done," said Fey. "I can't do that for four years. And by 'I'm done,' I mean I'm leaving Earth."

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 skit 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.”

30 Rock

Fey developed a sitcom, 30 Rock, for NBC's fall 2006 schedule. The show is produced by NBC and Broadway Video, with Lorne Michaels and two former producers of The Tracy Morgan Show, David Miner, who is also her manager at 3 Arts, and Joann Alfano. Fey also writes and stars in the sitcom, said to be based on her experiences at SNL.

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." Fey, however, continued with her acting and producing duties on 30 Rock, as required by her contract Production on 30 Rock ended Friday, November 9, and resumed at the end of the writers strike.

Episodes written for 30 Rock

So far, Fey has independently written eight episodes of 30 Rock and co-written four episodes. They are:

• "Pilot"
• "The Aftermath"
• "Tracy Does Conan"
• "The Head and the Hair" (co-written with John Riggi)
• "Black Tie" (co-written with Kay Cannon)
• "Up All Night"
• "The C Word"
• "Hiatus"
• "SeinfeldVision"
• "Somebody to Love" (co-written with Kay Cannon)
• "MILF Island" (co-written with Matt Hubbard)
• "Cooter"

Feature films

File:Tina fey mean girls.jpg

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 at Upper Darby High School and on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. The cast includes other present and past cast members of SNL including Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler. She also made a voice cameo in the animated film Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters as the team's mother, a giant burrito.

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. On the Internet Movie Database, Fey is still listed as writer of this film, which is still listed as "announced", with a projected release for 2009.

Other work

In 2000, Fey partnered with fellow SNL cast member Rachel Dratch in the critically acclaimed two-woman show Dratch & Fey at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, and the Chicago Improv Festival. Lorne Michaels saw her at one of the performances, which led to her becoming the co-anchor of SNL's Weekend Update. SNL's popular Boston Teens sketch originated at Second City in Chicago. Tina played Rachel Dratch's mother. She also appeared in Martin & Orloff, a surreal comedy that premiered at Austin's SXSW.

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 and she was included in the People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People 2003. Fey guest-starred on the August 13, 2007 Sesame Street episode, "The Bookaneers."

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. She has also done commercials for American Express credit card.

Personal life

Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, a composer on SNL. They met at Chicago's The 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. They reside 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. She has also supported humanitarian causes, such as the Mercy Corps World Hunger Center in New York City.

External links

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