Janeane Garofalo

Janeane Garofalo (born September 28, 1964, in Newton, New Jersey) is an American comedian, actress, and Broadway performer. The daughter of Joan and Carmine Garofalo, she is of Italian descent. Her mother, who worked as a secretary in the petrochemical industry, died of cancer when Garofalo was 24; her father is a former Exxon executive. She spent her childhood in several locations, including Ontario, California; Madison, New Jersey, where she attended Madison High School; and Houston, Texas, where she completed her secondary education at James E. Taylor High School. She went on to study history at Providence College, where she won a Showtime-sponsored comedy talent search, earning the title of Funniest Person in Rhode Island. She graduated with degrees in history and American studies, initially aspiring to write for Late Night with David Letterman. Before establishing herself in comedy, she worked briefly as a bike messenger in Boston.

Garofalo launched her stand-up career in the mid-1980s, building a style rooted in self-deprecating humor, cultural observation, and commentary on media-driven body image pressures. Her act centers on a notebook filled with article clippings and personal observations, which she references for direct quotes during performances. After relocating to Los Angeles in the early 1990s, she became a pioneer of the city's alternative comedy scene, launching an alt-comedy show at Big & Tall Books on August 6, 1991. She also co-created the Eating It alternative stand-up series, which ran at Luna Lounge on Manhattan's Lower East Side from 1995 to 2005. Her stand-up television appearances included HBO's Comedy Half-Hour in 1995 and a Comedy Hour special in 1997, as well as a one-hour special titled If I May, filmed at Seattle's Moore Theatre and broadcast on Epix in June 2010, with a DVD release following in September 2010.

Her television career gained momentum through cast roles on The Ben Stiller Show, The Larry Sanders Show, and Saturday Night Live. She later appeared in The West Wing, 24, Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, and the British series Ideal. From March 2004 to July 2006, she co-hosted The Majority Report on Air America Radio. Her television work has earned her nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Garofalo has appeared in more than 50 feature films. Her first screen role came in 1991 in Late for Dinner, playing a counter worker at a burger restaurant. Her breakthrough arrived in 1994 with Reality Bites, in which she played Vickie, the Gap-managing best friend of Winona Ryder's character. In 1996, she took the starring role in the romantic comedy The Truth About Cats & Dogs, playing a highly intelligent radio host in a film structured as a variation on Cyrano de Bergerac, with Uma Thurman in a supporting role. The following year, she led The Matchmaker, a romantic comedy set in Ireland, and appeared in a supporting capacity as a deputy sheriff in the ensemble police drama Cop Land, alongside Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, and Robert De Niro. In 1998, she voiced Ursula the Artist in the English dub of Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service. In 1999, she starred as The Bowler in Mystery Men. In 2000, she portrayed Anita Hoffman opposite Vincent D'Onofrio in Steal This Movie!, and received second billing in The Independent. She was top-billed in the 2001 cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer. In 2002, she appeared in The Laramie Project as Catherine Connolly. Her voice work continued with the animated Disney film The Wild in 2006 and the Pixar feature Ratatouille in 2007, in which she voiced Colette Tatou, a French chef, adopting a pronounced French accent for the role. Additional film credits include Clay Pigeons, Sweethearts, The Minus Man, The Independent, Flora & Ulysses, Bad Parents, and 3rd Street Blackout.

In 2017, Garofalo made her Broadway debut in Marvin's Room, adding a stage credit to a career that has spanned stand-up comedy, film, and television across more than three decades.