Besides being the co-anchor of "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live and the show's head writer, she is also the screenwriter for the new film Mean Girls. USA Today has a nice feature on her:
- Sure, the Saturday Night Live head writer and "Weekend Update" co-host is known for her scathing wit, deadpan social commentary and diatribes about terrorist alerts, society's pressures to have a baby and Playboy honcho Hugh Hefner's identical girlfriends. True, in her spare time, the recreational artist rips photos out of celebrity tabloid the National Enquirer and re-draws the stars, inserting dialogue bubbles with jokes too dirty to print in this newspaper. And yes, she skewers backstabbing, conniving high schoolers in her first screenplay, Mean Girls, which opens April 30.
But beneath that sardonic little grin and behind those signature black-rimmed glasses, Fey, 33, is a soft-spoken, introverted pussycat who bakes cakes and sews pillows. Seriously.
Just ask her husband of nearly three years, SNL musical director Jeff Richmond.
"Her persona is so caustic, but she's very shy, and she doesn't like confrontation," he says.
But she sure unleashes her anger in Mean Girls, a comedy that seems determined to prove that teens are heavyweight champions in girl-on-girl cruelty. The movie's catty Cruella De Vil is Regina George (Rachel McAdams), a girl who rules her school and her chic clique, the Plastics, and corrupts sweetly clueless new student Cady (Lindsay Lohan).
Regina is an "amalgam of girls I was intimidated by in high school," says Fey, who has a key role in the film as a misunderstood math teacher. She inserted unsavory aspects of herself into Regina as well: "If I don't like someone, I don't want my friends to like them either. It's a dark part of me that Regina has."
Though her movie paints a stark portrait of school as a bloody battlefield, Fey fondly looks back on her years at Pennsylvania's Upper Darby High School.
"My high school experience was a lot like my life right now, in that I was constantly overextended; I always had a paper due," she says. "I was very studious and obedient and in a lot of activities. I did the choir, the drama club, I was on the school paper, I played tennis. I definitely don't look back on it as a horrible time. I've always thought that if I hadn't ended up doing this, I would have been a teacher."
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Tom Johnson
"She's grade-A hot meat."
Man, I'll second that.
2 - Natalie Davis
I third that emotion.
3 - Mark Saleski
alright, we're actually agreeing about something!
4 - CW Fisher
She has a scar on her mouth. Ugly glasses. She needs a makeover. She needs to lose her unfunny sidekick and take all her clothes off. She needs hours of therapy, massage therapy. I would very much like to probe her psyche. I sense a breakthrough.
5 - Steve Rhodes
There was a good New Yorker profile of her last year.
6 - Eric Olsen
I like the glases, Jimmy and the scar.
7 - Mark Saleski
the online new yorker profile left out the yummy photos that were in the print version.
8 - CW Fisher
I like a good scar once in a while, Eric. And glasses are removeable. So's Jimmy. He's worthless, but only because he's not funny. Merely cute. Besides, most men these days are just there to make the women look smarter. Actually, now that I think about it, she's not so funny either, and neither am I. Back to bed.
9 - Jim Carruthers
I want to say, "I saw her first", but I didn't, and don't live in NYC, and she's way out of my league. But damn, I so want to get all Sophie B. Hawkins with her.
I know, if I kill Jimmy Fallon, while having a copy of Eggars' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" in my pocket, that'll do it.
Oh, wait, my copy isn't a first edition, guess I'll have to Neal Pollack's "Anthology of American Literature", at least it's autographed, and I can always use the excuse he put me up to it.
10 - CW Fisher
Jim... you're Canadian. The polite thing to do would be to leave our chicks alone. OK? Hands off our chicks, man.
Ah, you can have her. Do you need help with Fallon? I've got duct tape. We could make him watch himself.
She's married and she makes pillows. This tells me she's just another chick with a job and a life.
Yeah, take her. I'm done.
11 - Jim Carruthers
So what you're saying is that in my ideal fantasy world, I can have either Tina Fey or dead Jimmy Fallon.
Hmmm, let me think.
Okay, done, dead Jimmy Fallon, because that would increase world happiness, and me and Tina probably wouldn't work out.
12 - Jim Carruthers
I know I shouldn't joke about dead SNL people, but think how much better the world would be if the right SNL people had died.
And of course the Belushi clause, where in a just universe ghod would have gone through them in strict alphabetical order.
13 - RJ Elliott
She's not very funny. And she's not very hot.
She's just a chick who made it into the 'biz and is riding the wave of pseudo-celebrity into getting yet another trash-can movie made.
Mean Girls will be forgotten six months from now. And a couple years from now, so will Tina Fey.
14 - Nick Jones
You're just pissed because you thought "Mean Girls" was going to be about Ann Coulter, Laura ingraham, Mona Charen, and Matt Drudge.
15 - Eric Olsen
She is both the head writer of the show and hilarious as co-anchor of Weekend Update, which is usually the funniest part of the show. She is not hot in the obvious, traditional sense: she is hot for being smart and funny and cute and not trying to be hot.
16 - Tina Feyrinski
Tina Fey Sucks! The show has been horrible ever since she took over as head writer. The show is so not clever, that the media has to create the illusion that she is funny by writing articles about her to convince the audience that she is funny.
Sketches suck. No new, creative ideas on the show. Get rid of Tina and make the show better. Come on people...
17 - RJ Elliott
Thanks, TF... :-/
She's horrible, people. She is an unnattracitve, unfunny "comedian" who is almost single-handedly destroying SNL.
18 - RJ Elliott
Oy...
"She's horrible, people. She is an unattractive, unfunny "comedian" who is almost single-handedly destroying SNL."
Sorry for the typos...
19 - Al Barger
Tina Fey is obviously a dirty, dirty whore with a smart mouth whom Jesus despises passionately. She BADLY needs to be rebuked for her offenses against Geometry and Theology. The minx must be put to the lash!
20 - Nick Jones
"The show has been horrible ever since she took over as head writer."
Where have you been? The show hasn't been funny in DECADES.
21 - Nick Jones
"She is...unattractive..."
I'm going to have to disagree with you, RJ (there's a surprise, huh?). The picture on page 33 of the latest "Entertainment Weekly" (May 7, 2004 issue) tells me quite a different story.
22 - Ali Rose
I don't think that anyone could have said it better than well...maybe fey herself. Oh well
HAPPY 34 BIRTHDAY TINA!
23 - whatever
tina fey is a very successful comedian, and uh, she is really attractive. funny, successful, and a brunnette :) with the neatest emo glasses, she is really attractive. seriously, mean girls is a classic. ive seen it 2 times myself and it was funnier the second. tina fey is scucessful and people are only mad that someone UNCONVENTIONALLY attractive is taking up air space. those reality tv show bimbo girls must go!
24 - Eric Olsen
good points Whatever, I agree
25 - Al Barger
I don't see what is even particularly "unconventional" about her attractiveness. The girl's just plain cute. Her sharp wit simply amplifies her appeal. She goes from being real cute to just plain totally hot.
What's the problem? Is it just that she doesn't have huge plastic Pamela Anderson teats?