Janet Hubbard-Brown - Tina Fey: Writer and Actor

A publicity photo of Tina Fey for her television sitcom, 30 Rock. The award-winning show, based on her experiences as a writer on Saturday Night Live, has been critically acclaimed since its debut in 2006.

Source: NBC-TV/The Kobal Collection/Mary E. Matthews.

Growing up, Tina Fey felt fortunate to have a mother who she thought was hilariously funny and a father and older brother who shared their love of sitcoms and comedy films with her. As she moved into adolescence, she used the humor she had learned at home to cover up her shyness. She had inherited her mother's biting wit, which manifested in her writing (she was on the high school newspaper staff) and in social groups. She worked at a local theater in summers, and then went off to the University of Virginia, where she majored in theater for four years. A hint of her determination to succeed became evident thereshe took the same "Introduction to Theater" class four times. Also, though laughingly recalled as being "mousey" by one of her professors, she ended up with the lead in Cabaret her senior year, the first example of her ability to transform herself.

Chicago, known as a mecca for comedy, beckoned. She auditioned for The Training Center at Second City, where some of the greatest comedians performing had learned improvisation, a form of acting that requires complete spontaneity on the stage. She was rejected, but undaunted. She went to ImprovOlympic, where Del Close, who was considered a guru of improvisation, was teaching. (To support herself, she took a job at the YMCA, where she made $7 an hour folding towels.) A few months later she was accepted at her second audition for The Training Center. There, she studied under Martin de Maat, the artistic director who recognized her talent and used his influence to have her move up the hierarchy.

Scott Adsit, who was at Second City with her, and who is on her show 30 Rock, recalled her as being mousey as well, but also brimming with talent and determination to succeed. In a stroke of luck, she was accepted onto the Mainstage, and once there, she really began to prove herself. Through a friend, Adam McKay, who had left Second City and become head writer at Saturday Night Live, she submitted sketches to producer Lorne Michaels. He invited her to come to New York and work on the show. Michaels was seeking a writer with a female sensibility. As was the case at Second City, male writers and comics far outnumbered women, which meant that the humor had been more rowdy/male from the start.

Fey's physical transformation on SNL has been well documented. Maureen Dowd wrote in Vanity Fair:

Elizabeth Stamatina Fey started as a writer and performer with a bad short haircut in Chicago improv. Then she retreated backstage at SNL, wore a ski hat, and gained weight writing sharp, funny jokes and eating junk food. Then she lost 30 pounds, fixed her hair, put on a pair of hot-teacher glasses.3

In 2000, after three years as a writer on the show, Fey was made head writer, a position which put her in charge of the staff writers, and in that same year she became the first female co-anchor of "Weekend Update" since the late 1970s. Wearing a blue blazer and glasses that became her trademark, she wowed audiences with her one-liners and biting wit.

Fey often talks about her life in relation to her work, and much of her work relates to her life. For example, after her film Mean Girls opened in 2004, she admitted to ridiculing "wayward classmates, reserving particular scorn for kids who drank, cut school, overdressed, or slept around."4 For 30 Rock, she created a character named Liz Lemon, whose life is based on the seven years Fey spent on SNL as head writer.

Fey's experiences have been instrumental in changing the face of television comedy with her show 30 Rock, a fictional sketch comedy show. Nancy Franklin wrote in the New Yorker, "30 Rock doesn't have the neat structure of most sitcoms; its roots are in sketch comedy and in improv, with their set pieces and their eagerness to keep you entertained every second without worrying too much about the story."5New York Times writer Ross Simonini explained that "the digressions themselves are what give the characters meaning and the show its substance."6 He also believed that 30 Rock is "a bold experiment in narrative."7 Fans appreciate the ironic (stating the opposite of the truth in order to make people laugh) and deadpan humor that Fey is now famous for.

By the time Fey was handed her Emmy in September 2009 for impersonating Sarah Palin, she had accumulated six Emmy awards, four Writers Guild of America awards, three Golden Globe awards, and three Screen Actors Guild awards. She had changed her image from ugly duckling to being voted one of their "50 Most Beautiful People" in 2003 by the editors of