| Lily Tomlin |
Tomlin in 2009 |
| Born |
Mary Jean Tomlin
September 1, 1939 (1939-09-01) (age 69)
Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
| Occupation |
Actress, Comedian, Writer, Producer |
| Years active |
1965 – present |
| Domestic partner(s) |
Jane Wagner (1970s-present) |
| Official website |
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin (born September 1, 1939) is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer. She has won multiple awards from many quarters, including Tony Awards, Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award and has also been nominated for an Academy Award.
Early life
Tomlin was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in the Brewster-Douglass Housing Projects, the daughter of Lillie Mae (née Ford), a housewife and nurse's aide, and Guy Tomlin, a factory worker.1 Tomlin's parents were Southern Baptists who moved to Detroit from Paducah, Kentucky during the Great Depression.234 She is a 1957 graduate of Cass Technical High School. Tomlin attended Wayne State University, where her interest in the theater and performing arts began. After college, Tomlin began doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs in Detroit and later in New York City. Her first television appearance was on The Merv Griffin Show in 1965.
Career
In 1969, Tomlin joined the sketch comedy show Laugh-In. Some characters from the show have been associated with her throughout her career, including the wisecracking, snorting telephone operator, Ernestine; the bratty five-year-old Edith Ann, seated in an over-sized rocking chair making rude noises while telling stories about her baby brother and pet dog Buster; and the Tasteful Lady, who lives a gracious, naїve life of entitlement in the upper class and shades of whom show up in Tomlin's film role in All of Me (see below). Additional characters include Susie the Sorority Girl, who appeared on Tomlin's album Modern Scream and in her 1975 appearance on Saturday Night Live.
Tomlin was also one of the first female comedians to break out in male drag. Though drag had been around in Hollywood for some time by men, Tomlin broke new ground by not only crossing gender stereotypes, but racial ones as well. She accomplished this in the late 70's with Pervis Hawkins, a black rhythm-and-blues soul singer (patterned after Luther Vandross), with a mustache, beard and close-cropped afro hairstyle, dressed in a three-piece suit. Tomlin used very little if any skin-darkening cosmetics (it usually depended on stage lighting) as part of the character.
AT&T offered Tomlin US$500,000 to play her character Ernestine in a commercial, but she declined saying it would compromise her artistic integrity. However, in 1976 she did appear as Ernestine in a parody of a commercial on Saturday Night Live, in which she proclaimed, "We don't care, we don't have to...we're the phone company." The character would later make a guest appearance at The Superhighway Summit at UCLA, January 11, 1994, interrupting a speech being given on the information superhighway by then-Vice President Al Gore. In 2003, she made two commercials as Ernestine for WebEx.
Tomlin is noted for her versatility. In Robert Altman's Nashville, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, she played Linnea Reese, a straitlaced, gospel-singing, mother of two deaf children who has an affair with a country singer (played by Keith Carradine). The Oscar that year went to Lee Grant for her role in Shampoo. She was also a secretary Violet Newstead in Nine to Five, performed several comedic roles in the 1981 film The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and was a sickly heiress in the Steve Martin comedy All of Me.
She and Bette Midler played two pairs of identical twins who were switched at birth in the 1989 comedy Big Business. Tomlin also played chain-smoking waitress Doreen Piggott in Altman's 1993 ensemble film Short Cuts, and, in two films by director David O. Russell; she appeared as a peacenik Raku artist in Flirting with Disaster and later, as an existential detective in I ♥ Huckabees. In 2007, a video recording surfaced showing Tomlin and Russell in a heated exchange over the shooting of a scene in Huckabees.
Tomlin voiced Ms. Frizzle on the animated television series The Magic School Bus from 1994 to 1997. Also, in the 1990s, Tomlin appeared on the popular sitcom Murphy Brown as the title character's boss. In 2005 and 2006, she had a recurring role as Will Truman's boss Margot on Will & Grace. She appeared on the dramatic series The West Wing for four years (2002-2006) in the recurring role of presidential secretary Deborah Fiderer.
Tomlin starred in the 1985 hit one-woman Broadway show The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, written by her long-time life partner, writer/producer Jane Wagner. The show won her a Tony Award, and was made into a feature film in 1991. Tomlin revived the show for a brief run in 2000. In 1989, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.
She collaborated again with director Robert Altman, starring in the film A Prairie Home Companion, playing half of a middle-aged Midwestern singing duo with Meryl Streep.
In the 2008-2009 fifth season of Desperate Housewives she has a recurring role as Roberta, the sister of Mrs. McCluskey (played by Kathryn Joosten). Previously on The West Wing, Tomlin had played the successor to Delores Landingham, the previous secretary, who was played by During the 2008 Emmy Awards, Tomlin appeared as part of a tribute to the seminal 1960s television series Laugh-In. Tomlin voiced Tammy in the 2005 The Simpsons episode, "The Last of the Red Hat Mamas." Tomlin will provide a voice for the upcoming film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, projected for an April 2009 release, although the specific role is as yet unknown.5
Since its launch in 2008, Tomlin has been a contributor for wowOwow.com. A new website for women to talk culture, politics and gossip.
Tomlin and Kathryn Joosten are currently in talks to star in a Desperate Housewives spin-off.6 The Desperate Housewives spin-off has just been given the green light.7
Personal life
Tomlin met her life partner Jane Wagner in 1971. After watching an after school special written by Wagner, Tomlin invited her to Los Angeles to collaborate on a comedy album. Although Tomlin officially declared her homosexuality to the press in 2001, her sexual orientation has not really been a secret; in interviews she would often refer to Jane Wagner as her partner. As Tomlin herself stated in 2008, in an interview for Just Out magazine:
| “ |
Everybody in the industry was certainly aware of my sexuality and of Jane... In interviews I always reference Jane and talk about Jane, but they don't always write about it.8 |
” |
Tomlin has been involved in a number of feminist and gay friendly film productions, and on her 1975 album Modern Scream she poked-fun at straight actors who make a point of distancing themselves from their homosexual characters — answering the pseudo-interview question, she replied:
| “ |
How did it feel to play a heterosexual? I've seen these women all my life, I know how they walk, I know how they talk ...citation needed |
” |
Her narration of the documentary The Celluloid Closet in 1995, a film examining Hollywood's portrayals of homosexuals, was also largely considered a nod to the open secret of her orientation. During the optional audio commentary for the documentary, Tomlin does make mention of rejecting an offer by a magazine to discuss her personal life.
Awards
Tomlin has received numerous awards,910 including: six Emmys; a special 1977 Tony11 when she was appearing in her one woman Broadway show, Appearing Nitely; a second Tony as Best Actress, two Drama Desk Awards11 and an Outer Critics Circle Award for her one woman performance in Jane Wagner’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe; a CableACE Award for Executive Producing the film adaptation of The Search; a Grammy Award for her comedy album, This is a Recording (a collection of Ernestine the Telephone Operator routines12) as well as nominations for her subsequent albums Modern Scream, And That's the Truth, and On Stage; and two Peabody Awards — the first for the ABC television special, Edith Ann’s Christmas: Just Say Noël and the second for narrating and executive producing the HBO film, The Celluloid Closet.
Tomlin was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2003 she was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
In March 2009, Tomlin received Fenway Health's Dr. Susan M. Love Award for her contributions to women's health.13
(Selected list)
Filmography
References
External links
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 talks about a time she made a sandwich. Try not to get grossed out ...&link=http://www.youtube.com/v/ocBO0fr1Ui4&fs=1&hl=en&source=uds&autoplay=1&thumb=http://2.gvt0.com/vi/ocBO0fr1Ui4/default.jpg&celebrity=Lily Tomlin&videoType=YouTube)
![Magic School Bus - Goes to Seed [VHS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VH0ZGN3XL._SL160_.jpg)