Lily Tomlin

Mary Jean Tomlin, known professionally as Lily Tomlin, was born on September 1, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan, to Lillie Mae Tomlin, a housewife and nurse aide, and Guy Tomlin, a factory worker. Her parents were Southern Baptists who had relocated to Detroit from Paducah, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. Tomlin graduated from Cass Technical High School in 1957 and went on to attend Wayne State University, where she initially studied biology before an audition for a stage production redirected her toward a career in theatre. She subsequently studied acting at the HB Studio in New York City.

Tomlin began her professional life performing stand-up comedy in Detroit nightclubs before moving to New York City, where she continued performing and made her first television appearance on The Merv Griffin Show in 1965. She became a cast member on The Garry Moore Show the following year and later served as a hostess on the ABC series Music Scene. Her national breakthrough came in 1969 when she joined NBC's sketch comedy program Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, where she remained until 1973. On that show she developed a roster of recurring original characters, among them Ernestine, a brash telephone operator, and Edith Ann, a philosophizing five-and-a-half-year-old girl seated in an oversized rocking chair. In 1970, AT&T offered Tomlin $500,000 to use the Ernestine character in a commercial, an offer she declined on grounds of artistic integrity.

Her recording work during this period also brought recognition: the album This Is a Recording earned her the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album in 1972, making her the first solo female artist to receive that honor. The television special Lily, broadcast in 1973, brought her an Emmy Award.

Tomlin made her feature film debut in Robert Altman's Nashville in 1975, a performance that earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1977, her portrayal of Margo Sperling in The Late Show won her the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival and generated nominations for both the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Actress. That same year, she made her Broadway debut with Appearing Nitely. Subsequent film credits include All of Me (1984), the comedy 9 to 5 (1980) alongside Jane Fonda, Big Business (1988), Flirting with Disaster (1996), Tea with Mussolini (1999), I Heart Huckabees (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Grandma (2015). She also provided the voice of Aunt May in the animated feature Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).

On Broadway, Tomlin's most celebrated work is The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, written by her partner and later wife Jane Wagner. The show opened in 1985 and earned Tomlin the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play in 1986, along with the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience, both also in 1986. She returned to Broadway with the production again in 2000.

Tomlin's television work has been equally extensive. She voiced Ms. Frizzle on the children's animated series The Magic School Bus from 1994 to 1997 and reprised the role for The Magic School Bus Rides Again from 2017 to 2021. From 2002 to 2006, she portrayed Deborah Fiderer on the Aaron Sorkin drama The West Wing. Beginning in 2015, she co-starred with Jane Fonda in the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, which ran for seven seasons through 2022 and brought her four Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She and Fonda also reunited on screen in 80 for Brady (2023) and Moving On (2023).

Across a career spanning more than five decades, Tomlin has accumulated seven Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, two Tony Awards, and an Academy Award nomination. She received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2017.