Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey ( ; born May 18, 1970) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. Known for her comedic roles in sketch comedy, television and film, Fey has received numerous accolades, including ten Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for a Grammy Award and a Tony Award. She appeared on the Time 100 list of the 100 most influential people in the world in both 2007 and 2009, and was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2010.
Fey broke into comedy as a featured player in the Chicago-based improvisational comedy group The Second City. She appeared on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1997 to 2006, for which she served as a head writer, a performer, and co-anchor of Weekend Update. She later returned to the show portraying a satirical version of 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin in subsequent guest appearances. She gained acclaim for creating and starring as Liz Lemon in the NBC sitcom 30 Rock (2006–2013), which earned her several accolades including the Primetime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and four Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.
She later created several shows, including the Netflix sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2020), the NBC sitcom Mr. Mayor (2021–2022), and the Netflix comedy-drama series The Four Seasons (2025–present), and executive produced the Peacock musical comedy series Girls5eva (2021–2024). Fey and Amy Poehler co-hosted the Golden Globe Awards four times in the years 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2021, as well as SNL in 2015, the latter of which earned them a Primetime Emmy Award. On film, Fey has acted in Mean Girls (2004), Baby Mama (2008), Date Night (2010), Megamind (2010), Admission (2013), Muppets Most Wanted (2014), Sisters (2015), Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016), Wine Country (2019), Soul (2020), and A Haunting in Venice (2023).
Fey released her memoir, Bossypants (2011), which topped The New York Times Best Seller list for five weeks and garnered her a Grammy Award nomination. She also created the musical adaptation Mean Girls, which premiered on Broadway in 2018, and earned her a Tony Award nomination. She later adapted the stage production into a 2024 musical film of the same name.
Elizabeth Stamatina Fey was born on May 18, 1970, in Upper Darby Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Her father, Donald Henry Fey (1933–2015), was a veteran of the Korean War, university administrator for the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University, and a grant proposal writer who raised $500 million for schools, hospitals, and public service agencies through proposals and direct mail appeals. Following her father's death, Fey established a scholarship fund in his name at his alma mater, Temple University, to support war veterans studying journalism. Her mother, Zenobia "Jeanne" (née Xenakes; Greek: Ζηνοβία Ξενάκη Φέι; 1930–2024), was born in Piraeus, Greece. She worked professionally as a brokerage employee. Fey's maternal grandmother, Vasiliki Kourelakou, left the Greek village of Petrina, Laconia, on her own and arrived in the United States in February 1921. Fey's maternal grandfather, Constantine Xenakes, was from the village of Panagia on the Greek island of Ikaria. Fey's father had English, German and Scots-Irish ancestry; one of her paternal ancestors was John Hewson, an English textile manufacturer who emigrated to the United States with the support of Benjamin Franklin, enabling Hewson to open a quilting factory in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to a genealogical DNA test arranged by the television series Finding Your Roots, Fey's ancestry is 94% European, 3% Middle Eastern, and 3% from the Caucasus. She has a brother, Peter, who is eight years older.
Fey describes encountering comedy early:
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: my dad hated it because it ripped off The Honeymooners. I actually have a very low level of Flintstones knowledge for someone my age.
At age 11, Fey read Joe Franklin's Seventy Years of Great Film Comedians for a school project about comedy. She grew up watching Second City Television and has cited Catherine O'Hara as a role model.
Fey went by the nickname "Tina" at an early age. She attended Cardington-Stonehurst Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School in Upper Darby. By middle school, she knew she was interested in comedy. Fey attended Upper Darby High School, where she was an honors student, a member of the choir, drama club, and tennis team, and co-editor of the school's newspaper, The Acorn. She anonymously wrote the newspaper's satirical column, The Colonel. Following her graduation in 1988, Fey enrolled at the University of Virginia (UVA), where she studied playwriting and acting and was awarded the Pettway Prize. During her time at UVA, she was a member of Delta Zeta sorority and the student-led theater organization, First Year Players. She graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts degree and a major in drama.
After college, Fey moved to Chicago. She worked as a receptionist during the day at the YMCA in Evanston, Illinois, and took performance classes at the improvisational comedy troupe The Second City at night. Fey started doing gigs at Improv Olympic in 1993 where she first worked with pianist Jeff Richmond, her future husband, and frequent collaborator Amy Poehler. Both Fey and Richmond got jobs at Second City. Fey appeared in "the legendary revue 'Paradigm Lost', alongside the likes of Rachel Dratch, Kevin Dorff, Scott Adsit, Jenna Jolovitz and Jim Zulevic."
Saturday Night Live (1997–2006)
While performing shows with The Second City in 1997, Fey submitted several scripts to NBC's variety show Saturday Night Live, at the request of its head writer Adam McKay, a former performer at Second City. She was hired as a writer following a meeting with SNL creator Lorne Michaels, and moved from Chicago to New York. Fey told The New Yorker, "I'd had my eye on the show forever, the way other kids have their eye on Derek Jeter." Originally, Fey "struggled" at SNL. Her first sketch to air starred Chris Farley in a Sally Jessy Raphael satire. Fey went on to write a series of parodies, including one of ABC's morning talk show The View. She co-wrote the "Sully and Denise (The Boston Teens)" sketches with Rachel Dratch, who plays one of the teens.
Fey was an extra in a 1998 episode, and after watching herself, decided to diet and lost 30 pounds. She told The New York Times, "I was a completely normal weight, but I was here in New York City, I had money and I couldn't buy any clothes. After I lost weight, there was interest in putting me on camera." In 1999, McKay stepped down as head writer, which led Michaels to approach Fey for the position. She became SNL's first female head writer. In January 2001, she appeared on an episode of Real World/Road Rules Extreme Challenge as a judge of a comedy-based mission.
In 2000, Fey began performing in sketches and became a co-anchor of SNL's Weekend Update segment alongside Jimmy Fallon. Fey said she did not ask to audition, but that Michaels approached her. Michaels explained that there was chemistry between Fey and Fallon, though he felt the decision was "kind of risky" at the time. Her role in Weekend Update was well received by critics. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "Fey delivers such blow darts – poison filled jokes written in long, precisely parsed sentences unprecedented in [Weekend Update] history – with such a bright, sunny countenance makes her all the more devilishly delightful." Dennis Miller, a former cast member of SNL and anchor of Weekend Update, was pleased with Fey as one of the anchors: "Fey might be the best Weekend Update anchor who ever did it. She writes the funniest jokes." Robert Bianco of USA Today, however, commented that he was "not enamored" of the pairing.