Gender: Female Religion:Baptist Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation:Lesbian[1] Occupation: Actor, Comic Party Affiliation: Democratic
Nationality: United States Executive summary:Laugh-In
Lily Tomlin is a comedian and actress. She first shot to fame in 1970 when she joined the cast of the slapstick sketch show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Her most well-known characters include Ernestine (the "One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy..." telephone operator) and Edith Ann (the precocious child).
Her movies include Robert Altman's Nashville and Short Cuts, Nine to Five with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, All of Me with Steve Martin, Big Business with Bette Midler, Flirting with Disaster with Ben Stiller, and I Heart Huckabees with Dustin Hoffman. She also narrated and executive produced The Celluloid Closet, the 1995 documentary on how homosexuality has been portrayed in Hollywood films. On TV, Tomlin played Candice Bergen's boss on the last two seasons on Murphy Brown, the voice of Ms. Frizzle on The Magic School Bus, and Martin Sheen's secretary on The West Wing (after Mrs. Landingham died).
Tomlin's 1986 one-woman show, The Search for Signs of Inteligent (sic) Life in the Universe, was a long-running critical success. It won Tomlin a Tony, and was made into a film in 1991. On at least several occasions during its Broadway run, Tomlin donned disguises and chatted incognito with the crowds on the sidewalk lined up to get in. Like most of Tomlin's comedy act since the early 1970s, it was written by her long-time writer and lover, Jane Wagner. Wagner also wrote Tomlin's films Moment by Moment and The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and contributed to several of Tomlin's TV specials.
Her 1973 CBS-TV special, Lily, included a controversial sketch in which Tomlin and Richard Pryor answered a race-related questionnaire. The show ended with Tomlin and Pryor kissing, a startling black-and-white moment on national TV in 1973. Despite high ratings, the special was never rerun.
Tomlin studied under Charles Nelson Reilly, who, when he was not playing a prancing goofball on TV, was also a well-respected acting coach.
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AKA Mary Jean Tomlin