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Mary Jean “Lily” Tomlin (born September 1, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer who has won several Tony Awards and Emmy Awards, plus a Grammy Award. During her 40-year career she has also been nominated for an Academy Award.

Biography

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

Tomlin in a Laugh-In publicity photo

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 gum-chewing, 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 the 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.She lost the award though to Lee Grant for 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, set at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. 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.

Tomlin voiced Ms. Frizzle on the animated television series The Magic School Bus from 1994 to 1998. 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 starred 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.

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 Simpsons, "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

Personal life

Before declaring her sexuality, Tomlin was involved in feminist and homosexual-friendly film productions, and would often refer to her partner Jane Wagner. On her 1975 album Modern Scream she mocked straight actors who make a point of distancing themselves from their homosexual characters; answering the pseudo-interview question, "How did it feel to play a heterosexual?" she replied, "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.

Awards

Tomlin has received numerous awards, including: six Emmys; a Tony for her one woman Broadway show, Appearing Nitely; a second Tony as Best Actress, Drama Desk Award and 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 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.

Filmography

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lily Tomlin

• Lily Tomlin Official website
• Lily Tomlin at the Internet Broadway Database
• Lily Tomlin at the Internet Movie Database
• Tomlin profile at AfterEllen.com
• AARP Magazine: Who's Lily Now?
• Time Magazine cover: March 28, 1977
• Lily Tomlin Quotes - The Quotations Page
• Lily Tomlin - BrainyQuote.com
• Metro Weekly interview
• The Advocate interview March 15, 2005