Tina Fey

Profile

Elizabeth Stamatina “Tina” Fey, born May 18, 1970, in Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer whose career has moved through sketch comedy, television, film, memoir, and Broadway. She became one of the most recognized comic voices of her time through sharp writing, live performance, and characters who made anxiety, ambition, and awkwardness funny without sanding off their edges.

Fey first broke into comedy with the Chicago improvisational group The Second City. After college, she moved to Chicago, worked days as a receptionist at the YMCA in Evanston, Illinois, and took performance classes at Second City at night. In 1993 she began doing gigs at Improv Olympic, where she first worked with pianist Jeff Richmond, her future husband, and frequent collaborator Amy Poehler. She later appeared in the Second City revue “Paradigm Lost,” alongside performers including Rachel Dratch, Kevin Dorff, Scott Adsit, Jenna Jolovitz, and Jim Zulevic.

In 1997, while performing with The Second City, Fey submitted scripts to Saturday Night Live at the request of head writer Adam McKay. After meeting creator Lorne Michaels, she was hired as a writer and moved from Chicago to New York. She appeared on the NBC sketch series from 1997 to 2006, serving as head writer, performer, and co-anchor of Weekend Update. She later returned to the show in guest appearances portraying a satirical version of 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Fey and Amy Poehler also co-hosted SNL in 2015, an appearance that earned them a Primetime Emmy Award.

Work and influence

Fey gained wide acclaim as the creator and star of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, which ran from 2006 to 2013. Her role as Liz Lemon brought her several awards, including a Primetime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. She later created Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Mr. Mayor, and The Four Seasons, and executive produced Girls5eva. Her film work includes Mean Girls, Baby Mama, Date Night, Megamind, Admission, Muppets Most Wanted, Sisters, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Wine Country, and Soul. Her memoir, Bossypants, topped The New York Times Best Seller list for five weeks and earned a Grammy Award nomination. She also created the Broadway musical adaptation of Mean Girls, which premiered in 2018 and earned her a Tony Award nomination, then adapted it into a 2024 musical film.

Fey’s comic sense was shaped early. Her parents introduced her to Young Frankenstein, Saturday Night Live, Monty Python, Marx Brothers movies, and The Honeymooners. At 11, she read Joe Franklin’s Seventy Years of Great Film Comedians for a school project. She grew up watching Second City Television and cited Catherine O’Hara as a role model. At Upper Darby High School, she was an honors student, joined choir, drama club, and tennis, co-edited the school newspaper, and anonymously wrote its satirical column. At the University of Virginia, she studied playwriting and acting and graduated in 1992 with a drama degree.

Across her work, Fey has been honored with ten Primetime Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, nominations for a Grammy Award and a Tony Award, placement on the Time 100 list in 2007 and 2009, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2010. Her line, “There are no mistakes, only opportunities,” fits a career built in writers’ rooms, live comedy, improvisation, and reinvention. Her words still resonate because they come from the practical world of performance, where a joke can fail, a sketch can change, and the next line still has to land.