Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey (born May 18, 1970) is a sexy, Emmy-winning American writer, comedian and actress. Fey currently co-produces, writes and stars in the television program 30 Rock, a sitcom loosely based on her experiences at Saturday Night Live.

Fey was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, daughter of Jeanne, a brokerage employee, and Donald Fey, a university grant-proposal writer. Fey's father has German and Scottish ancestry and her mother is Greek American. Her brother, Peter, remembers a drawing she did when she was about seven: it showed people holding hands, walking down the street with wedges of Swiss cheese. The caption read, "What a friend we have in cheeses!"

Fey was exposed to comedy early, saying:

I remember my parents sneaking me in to see Young Frankenstein. We would also watch Saturday Night Live, or Monty Python or old Marx Brothers movies. My dad would let us stay up late to watch The Honeymooners. We were not allowed to watch The Flintstones, though, which my dad hated because it ripped off The Honeymooners. I actually have a very low level of Flintstones knowledge for someone my age.Stephen Whitty. 'SNL' writer sneaks uplifting messages into teen movie. The Star Ledger. April 25, 2004. Retrieved 10 March 2006.

Fey attended Cardington Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School. By middle school she knew she was interested in comedy, even doing an independent study project on the subject in eighth grade. She graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1988.

Fey began stripping at the age of 16, making enough money to pay for her college education.

After Fey graduated from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in Drama 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 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.

With then-head writer Adam McKay's help, Fey became a writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1997. By 1999, Fey was SNL's first female head writer, a milestone she downplays in light of the fact that there have not been that many head writers.

As co-head writer of SNL's 25th anniversary special, Fey won a 2001 Writers Guild of America Award. She and the writing staff also won a 2002 Emmy Award for their work on the show.

In September 2005, she went on maternity leave after giving birth to a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond. Her Weekend Update role was covered by Horatio Sanz for several weeks before her return to the show on October 22, 2005, at which time she noted: :"I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract; the baby and I only have a verbal agreement."

Fey confirmed during a July 2006 Tonight Show appearance that she would not be returning to SNL for its 2006-7 season.

Some recurring sketches written by Fey include: * Parodies of Live with Regis and Kelly and The View * The Girl with No Gaydar, cowritten by Rachel Dratch * Boston Teens, cowritten by Dratch

She is also credited with: * Colonel Angus, portrayed by Christopher Walken in a sketch filled with word play on the colonel's name * Mom Jeans commercial * "Talkin 'Bout 'Ginas" (Parody of The Vagina Monologues) * "Old French Whore!" (game show parody with teens paired with old French prostitutes) * "Census" (Tim Meadows questions a clueless Christopher Walken)

In 2000, Fey and Jimmy Fallon became co-anchors of SNL's Weekend Update, a pairing that ended in May 2004 when Fallon last appeared as a cast member. (Fey also was co-writer of the Weekend Update segment). Fallon was replaced by Amy Poehler. It was the first time that two women co-anchored Weekend Update.

*Ashleigh Banfield *Barbara Pierce Bush *Bea Arthur *Janice Dickinson *Kathleen Willey *Mary Ann Mobley *Paris Hilton *Paula Zahn *Vanna White *Paula Abdul *Robin Williams *Brittany Murphy *Arnold Schwarzenegger

Fey developed a sitcom, 30 Rock, for NBC's fall 2006 schedule. The show is produced by NBC and Broadway Video, with Lorne Michaels and two former producers of The Tracy Morgan Show, David Miner, who is also her manager at 3 Arts, and Joann Alfano. She also writes and stars in the sitcom, said to be based on her experiences at SNL. The title is a reference to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, NBC's headquarters and the (fictional) location of most of the show.

The show debuted to mostly positive reviews; however, ratings for its original time slot on Wednesdays at 8 PM were weak. Rather than cancel the show, NBC moved the show into a revamped Thursday Must See TV comedy lineup at the end of November sweeps. After its first episode in its new Thursday 9:30 PM time slot on November 30, 2006, the network picked up the show for the entire season.

NBC renewed the series for a second season, which began in October 2007. In July 2007, Fey was nominated for an Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy for her role as Liz Lemon. The show itself won the 2007 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series.

In 1997 Tina recorded the voices for the British and German princesses for Williams' "Medieval Madness" pinball machine.

She partnered with fellow SNL 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.

SNL's popular Boston Teens sketch originated at Second City in Chicago. Tina played Rachel Dratch's mother.

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

She was ranked #80 on the Maxim Hot 100 Women of 2002.

Fey wrote the script for 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 0-609-60945-9) 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.

Slated for 2008 is Baby Mama, Fey's collaboration with former Saturday Night Live castmate Amy Poehler. The plot revolves around a business woman, Fey, who wants a child, but is busy with a career, and decides to find a surrogate (Poehler).

In 2007, Fey was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World.

In 2007, Fey appeared in a television advertisement for American Express.

Fey is currently participating in the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike, which began at 12:01 a.m. on November 5, 2007.

On the August 12, 2007, edition of Speed TV's The Speed Report, co-host Nicole Manske stated that she was in her "Tina Fey moment" when she could not get her contact lenses in prior to the start of the show, resulting in Manske having to wear glasses similar to what Fey wore during her Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" reports from 2000 to 2006.

Fey is the inspiration for the song "Tina Fey," written by Brad San Martin and recorded by the band Okay Thursday on their 2006 album Fun in Flats.

In the Will & Grace episode "The Blonde Leading the Blind," Karen gets glasses, and her maid, Rosario, says, "You look like the lovely and talented Miss Tina Fey."

In The Office episode Valentine's Day when Michael is walking around the Rockefeller Center he confuses a women who wore glasses with Tina Fey.

Talk show host and comedy writer Spike Feresten describes himself as a "Tina Fey look-a-like" when deprecating his appearance- the implication being that he looks like a woman.

Fey was placed seventh on the 2007 Hot 100 List http://www.afterellen.com/people/2007/6/hotlist?page=0%2C1 on AfterEllen.com, the top website for queer (LGBT) women.

Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, a composer on SNL. They met at Chicago's Second City and dated for seven years before marrying in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on June 3, 2001. They have a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond, who was born on September 10, 2005 in New York.

Fey has a scar a few inches long on the left side of her chin and cheek. Responding to questions about its origin, Fey was quoted in the November 25, 2001 New York Times as saying: "It's a childhood injury that was kind of grim. And it kind of bums my parents out for me to talk about it."

Fey is known as a committed environmentalist and has noted that, apart from recycling, she also drives a Lexus hybrid.

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