May 18, 1970

Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, USA

Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is an American writer, comedian and actress. Fey co-produces, writes and stars in 30 Rock, a sitcom loosely based on her experiences at Saturday Night Live; the show is part of NBC's fall 2006 schedule. After Fey graduated from drama school at the University of Virginia in 1992, she moved to Chicago, getting a day job at a residential YMCA to take night classes at The Second City. She made what she later described as an "amateurish" attempt at stand-up comedy, and ... ... (read more...) learned that the key to improvisation was to "focus entirely on your partner. You take what they're giving you and use it to build a scene."

By 1994 she was invited to join the cast of The Second City, where she performed in the Jeff Award-winning revue Paradigm Lost. She is also a veteran of The ImprovOlympic.
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She partnered with fellow cast member Rachel Dratch in the critically acclaimed two-woman show Dratch & Fey at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, and the Chicago Improv Festival. Lorne Michaels saw her at one of the performances, which led to her becoming the co-anchor of SNL's Weekend Update.

She also appeared in Martin & Orloff, a surreal comedy which premiered at Austin's SXSW.

Fey wrote the script and co-starred in the 2004 movie Mean Girls. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Fey's high school life at Upper Darby High School and on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (ISBN 0609609459) by Rosalind Wiseman. The cast includes other present and past cast members of SNL including Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler.

As of April 2006, Fey is working on a script for a Paramount Pictures film by the name of Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill that is said to be based loosely on the true story of a Hasidic rock musician.