Lily Tomlin
Lily Tomlin | |
|---|---|
 Tomlin in 2009 | |
| Born | Mary Jean Tomlin |
| Occupation(s) | Actress, comedian, producer, writer |
| Years active | 1965–present |
| Partner | Jane Wagner (1972-present) |
| Website | http://www.lilytomlin.com/ |
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,[citation needed] the daughter of Lillie Mae (née Ford), a housewife and nurse's aide, and Guy Tomlin, a factory worker. She was born the same day of the German invasion of Poland.[1] Tomlin's parents were Southern Baptists who moved to Detroit from Paducah, Kentucky during the Great Depression.[2][3][4] 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, after a brief stint as a hostess on the ABC network's Music Scene, Tomlin joined NBC's sketch comedy show Laugh-In. Some characters from this 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 with her characters Tommy Velour and Rick. 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. In 1982, she premiered 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 later made 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 womanizing country singer (played by Keith Carradine). The Oscar that year went to Lee Grant for her role in Shampoo. She was also a secretary named 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 was the first woman to appear solo in a Broadway show with her premiere of "Appearing Nitely" at the Biltmore theatre in April, 1977. The same month, she made the cover of "Time" magazine with the headline "America's New Queen of Comedy." Her solo show then toured the country and was made into a record album titled "On Stage." In 1985, Tomlin starred in another 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 run on Broadway in 2000 which then toured the country through mid-2002. In 1989, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work in Chicago theatre.
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She collaborated again with director Robert Altman, starring in Altman's last film A Prairie Home Companion, playing Rhonda Johnson, one 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, who coincidentally had played Tomlin's secretarial predecessor on The West Wing). During the 2008 Emmy Awards, Tomlin appeared as part of a tribute to the influential 1960s television series Laugh-In. Tomlin voiced Tammy in the 2005 The Simpsons episode, "The Last of the Red Hat Mamas." Tomlin provided a voice for the film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, which was released in August 2009.[5]
Since its launch in 2008, Tomlin has been a contributor for wowOwow.com, a website for women to talk culture, politics and gossip.
Tomlin and Kathryn Joosten have been in talks to star in a Desperate Housewives spin-off,[6] which was given the green light in May 2009.[7] Tomlin premiered her one-woman show "Not Playing with a Full Deck" at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in November, 2009. It was her first appearance in that city, though she did tape an Emmy-winning TV special, a spoof of Las Vegas called "Lily: Sold Out" which premiered on CBS in January 1991. Tomlin guest starred as Marilyn Tobin in the third season of Damages on FX in 2010.
Throughout her career, there is rarely a time when Tomlin has not been performing her evolving show somewhere.
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 came out as a lesbian woman 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 gay and lesbian 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 ..."[3]
Awards
Tomlin has received numerous awards,[9][10] including: four primetime Emmys; a special 1977 Tony[11] when she was appearing in her one woman Broadway show, Appearing Nitely; a second Tony as Best Actress, two Drama Desk Awards[11] 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 routines[12]) 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)
- 1977 Lifetime Achievement[11]
Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series
- 1981 Lily: Sold Out (ABC)
- Lily Tomlin, executive producer and star; Rocco Urbisci, producer; Jane Wagner, executive producer
Outstanding Writing - Comedy-Variety or Music Special
- 1974 Lily (CBS)
- Rosalyn Drexler, Ann Elder, Karyl Geld, Robert Illes, Lorne Michaels, Richard Pryor, Jim Rusk, Herb Sargent, James R. Stein, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, Rod Warren, George Yanok, Writers
- 1976 Lily Tomlin (ABC)
- Ann Elder, Christopher Guest, Lorne Michaels, Earl Pomerantz, Jim Rusk, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, Rod Warren, George Yanok, Writers
- 1978 The Paul Simon Special (NBC)
- Chevy Chase, Tom Davis, Al Franken, Charles Grodin, Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon, Lily Tomlin, Alan Zweibel, Writers
Additionally, Lily (1973; above), in which she starred but did not produce, won for Outstanding Comedy-Variety, Variety Or Music Special, 1974 (Jerry McPhie, Herb Sargent, producers; Irene Pinn, executive producer)
Filmography
Television
References
- ^ "LilyTomlin>Biography". Retrieved March 6, 2009.
- ^ Bob Fischbach (2008-10-01). "Stage holds the magic for Tomlin". Omaha World-Herald. Retrieved 2008-07-29.
- ^ a b Duralde, Alonso (March 15, 2005), "Thoroughly modern Lily", The Advocate
- ^ Kevin Kelly (1985-08-11). "Lily Tomlin Mysterious Modest and Multifaceted". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2008-07-29.
- ^ "Exclusive News on Ponyo's English Voice Talent Cast". Ghibli World. 2008-11-26. Retrieved 2008-11-30.
- ^ "Wives" Spins, New York Post, May 12, 2009
- ^ Galloping "Girls", New York Post, May 18, 2009
- ^ Radosta, Jim. "Lily Tomlin Interview." Just Out, May 30, 2008.
- ^ Lily Tomlin Awards and Nominations at Entertainment Awards Database
- ^ Lily Tomlin Awards & Nominations at IMDB.com
- ^ a b c d Lily Tomlin Awards & Nominations at IBDB
- ^ a b Grammy Award for comedy album This is a Recording
- ^ "Women's Dinner Party 2009" (Press release). Fenway Health. March 5, 2009. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
- ^ Official Emmy Awards site
External links
- Lily Tomlin Official website
- Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
- Please use a more specific IBDB template. See the documentation for available templates.
- Please use a more specific IOBDB template. See the template documentation for available templates.
- Tomlin profile at AfterEllen.com
- AARP Magazine: Who's Lily Now?
- Time Magazine cover: March 28, 1977
- Metro Weekly interview
- The Advocate interview March 15, 2005
- AARP Magazine: Who's Lily Now?
- Interview: Lily Tomlin! CherryGrrl.com interview with Lily Tomlin, April 2010
- 1939 births
- Living people
- American comedians
- American film actors
- American television actors
- Drama Desk Award winners
- Feminist artists
- Grammy Award winners
- Lesbian actors
- LGBT comedians
- LGBT rights activists from the United States
- Actors from Michigan
- People from Detroit, Michigan
- Women comedians
- Wayne State University alumni
- LGBT people from the United States
- Mark Twain Prize recipients