Tina Fey: Snapshot

Tina Fey: Five Fun Facts

1. It was Tina Fey's 8th grade teacher who first told her she should be a writer. "I thought, I don't want to be a writer, 'cause then you're just by yourself in a room all the time," she told PEOPLE. "I want to be a star!"
2. On Howard Stern's radio show in 2006, Tina Fey called Paris Hilton "a piece of s–" and said she was a nightmare to work with when she hosted Saturday Night Live.
3. After three years behind the camera for SNL, Tina Fey lost 30 pounds on Weight Watchers and started appearing on the show. "I was a size 12 when I came to the show, and then I was really dealing with my stress with Krispy Kremes," she told PEOPLE.
4. Though her black-rimmed glasses are her trademark look, Tina Fey only needed them to read cue cards and rarely wore them away from the SNL set.
5. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler became friends in the early 1990s while taking improv classes in Chicago. Poehler told the Los Angeles Daily News, "We met, shook hands and said, 'I'll see you in 15 years in Hollywood.'"

Tina Fey: Biography

1990s

Tina's Turn in the Windy City

After earning her drama degree from the University of Virginia, Fey moves to Chicago, where she joins Chicago's legendary comedy troupe Second City (right) in 1994. She becomes friends with future Saturday Night Live alums Rachel Dratch and Horatio Sanz and meets Jeff Richmond, a director for Second City, whom she begins dating. "I was so happy," she tells CosmoGIRL! in 2008. "I was doing comedy with the best people in the field."

1997

August

Live From New York...

After sending sample sketches to SNL's producer Lorne Michaels, Fey joins the series as a staff writer. By 1999, she becomes the first female head writer on the show. "The skill you need for it is not necessarily to be the funniest person in that group," she tells Parade of her groundbreaking position. "What you need to be is a kind of conduit between the producers and the writers." A year later, she joins Jimmy Fallon as co-anchor of "Weekend Update."

2001

June 03

Fey Marries Richmond

After seven years of dating, Fey and Jeff Richmond marry in a Greek Orthodox ceremony. "I fell in love with her very quickly," Richmond, who is 10 years Fey's senior, tells PEOPLE. "She has this caustic, biting wit that pops out occasionally, but she really does have a little-girl-from-the-suburbs kind of ambience."

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