Cheat Sheet: Tina Fey

Name: Elizabeth Stamatina “Tina” Fey
Date of Birth: May 18, 1970
Place of Birth: Pennsylvania, USA
Special Move: Writing/Acting
Films include: Mean Girls, Date Night, Ponyo, Megamind

What you probably already know:

The first ever female head writer on Saturday Night Live, Sarah Palin impressionista supreme and penner of 30 Rock and Mean Girls – the classic teen flick that launched the careers of Lindsey Lohan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfriend, to name but a few – you’d have to be some kind of mad elk not to be a Tina Fey fan.

Leaping into the consciousness of the world as a writer on US sketch show Saturday Night Live in 1997, she went on to helm the writing team in 1999. She was responsible for creating their most viral sketch in history – the infamous Sarah Palin impression that racked up eleven million views on YouTube alone. Not content with ruling the roost on one of the US’s most iconic comedy platfoms, in 2005 she left to write the massively popular 30 Rock – a sitcom about a popular comedy show (drawing massively on her experiences of SNL). Since proving herself as a comic writer, she has gone on to starring roles in films such as Date Night with Steve Carell, The Invention Of Lying (in which she acted everyone else off the screen) as well as lending her voice to Lisa in Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo and Roxanne Richie in Megamind. Famous for her poisonously brilliant wit, unmatchable comic timing and terrifying work ethic, she returned to work less than a month after her daughter Alice was born, stating “I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract; the baby and I have only a verbal agreement.”

What you might not know

Woman got bare winner bling. So far, Tina Fey has racked up seven Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four Writers Guild of America Awards. But who cares about any of that when there’s a MYSTERY FACE-SCAR MYSTERY to be solved? That’s right, Tina Fey apparently has a scar a few inches long on the left side of her chin and cheek, originating in a childhood incident. Fey is notoriously reluctant to talk about it, stating in the past that “it’s a childhood injury that was kind of grim. And it kind of bums my parents out for me to talk about it”. A lot of people – good, fair people, would say that’s fair enough, fair enough Tina Fey with your lovely apparently scarred face. But hell, if you’re not that kind of person, websites like this were invented for you. Anyway, she always favours close-ups from the right, and that’s why. This is the kind of information you wanted, right?

Tina Fey quote:

“The difference between male comedy writers and female comedy writers is that the male ones are taller and weigh more. They also fake-rape each other more. Female comedy writers pretty much never fake-rape each other. The women comedy writers do not urinate in cups around the office.”

What to say at a dinner party:

“I just hope she and Amy Poehler get to re-create their glorious Saturday Night Live chemistry in an upcoming project – did you know their edition of Weekend Update was the first in history to have two female anchors?”

What not to say at a dinner party:

“Man she is well fit. Cept for that sick scar man, I hear she got it in her stripper days – SHWING”

Final thought:

A pioneer for comics male or female, we’re excited to catch Miss Fey in whatever she sets her unfairly sharp sights at next. Also, did we mention she’s really hot? She is. Nice work, surprisingly-short Mr Fey. Nice work indeed.

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