Tina Fey

Elizabeth Stamatina Fey, known as Tina Fey, was born in 1970 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. She became one of the best-known figures in American television and film comedy, and her work helped reshape sketch shows and sitcoms in the early twenty-first century.

Fey studied theater and acting at the University of Virginia and graduated in 1992. She then moved to Chicago, where she worked as a receptionist at a YMCA by day and took classes and performed with The Second City, the improv troupe that has trained many comedians. In 1997 she was hired as a writer for Saturday Night Live, and in 1999 she became the show's first female head writer. From 2000 she also appeared on camera and, alongside Jimmy Fallon, co-anchored the Weekend Update segment. Her impression of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2008 brought her wide attention.

Her style mixes self-deprecation with a sharp eye for social contradictions, especially those that affect women at work and in everyday life. That perspective runs through Mean Girls (2004), a film she co-wrote and starred in, and through 30 Rock (2006-2013), which she created for NBC and in which she played Liz Lemon, a head writer of a fictional variety show loosely drawn from her own time on SNL. With Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, made for Netflix, she explored humor rooted in trauma and recovery, following a woman who escapes a cult. In 2011 she published Bossypants, a humorous memoir that spent five weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Her work earned numerous honors, including nine Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes. In 2010 she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, becoming the youngest recipient to date. Her legacy is visible in the many writers and performers who moved from SNL into American television, and in the growing presence of women leading comedy writing teams. She remains active as an actor, producer and writer for both screen and stage.