• October 21, 2002
• Vol. 58
• No. 17

Star Slammer

Kathy Griffin Builds a Stand-Up Act by Skewering Julia, Angelina and Nicole

Former Suddenly Susan costar Kathy Griffin cackles with glee as she gobbles up tabloid stories about Angelina Jolie, Matthew Perry and Julia Roberts. "When I read all that crazy stuff," says Griffin, 41, "I have to tell jokes about them." She has turned her obsession into a poison-dart stand-up act at L.A.'s Laugh Factory that sends caustic disses instead of air kisses to the stars. Griffin, who bases her material not only on the tabs but also on her own encounters with Hollywood royalty, takes a swipe at Jolie's new maternal image. "Since that breakup, all of a sudden there's pictures of her dressed in, like, a soccer mom shirt and a skirt at the park playing with her Thai baby. Where's the vial of blood?" She thinks Roberts's sweetness is fake ("She will cut you in a heartbeat") and says Nicole Kidman adopted her two kids because "she would never ruin that figure." Ouch.

Not surprisingly, Griffin, whose show sells out most nights, can't recall seeing any of her targets chuckling in the audience. "They're so famous, they have no idea who I am," she says. "I don't care if they're upset." Then again, she has admitted to skittering out of view when she spotted one of her targets at a movie premiere. And of course Griffin, wed to a non-celebrity (computer administrator Matthew Moline, 31) and looking for new roles, would love to be like Angelina or Julia—a star big enough, say, to be mocked by a hustling stand-up comedian. "The main reason I get the tabloids," she says, "is to see if I'm in them."