- Born
- Birth nameMary Jean Tomlin
- Nickname
- Lily
- Height5′ 8″ (1.73 m)
- Lily Tomlin was born September 1, 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, to Lillie Mae (Ford) and Guy Tomlin, who moved to Michigan from Paducah, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. Her mother was a nurse's aide and her father was a factory worker. She graduated from Cass Technical High School in 1957, and later enrolled at Wayne State University. She began career by doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs in Detroit and New York City. Her first television appearance was on "The Merv Griffin Show". She went on to have astronomical success with several characters, notably Ernestine, a nosy, condescending telephone operator who generally treated customers with little sympathy and regard, on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967). Other notable characters are in film include Linnea Reese, a gospel-singing mother of two deaf children who has an affair with a womanizing country singer (played by (Keith Carradine) in Robert Altman's Nashville (1975), a performance for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Violet Newstead who joins her on-screen coworkers (played by Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton) in seeking revenge on their monstrous and sexist boss, Franklin M. Hart Jr., (played by Dabney Coleman) in the comedy 9 to 5 (1980), The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981), Doreen Piggot in Robert Altman's Short Cuts (1993), Cher's best-friend and American compatriot Georgie Rockwell in Tea with Mussolini (1999), deadpan private investigator, and existentialist Vivian Jaffe in I Heart Huckabees (2004), and Country-Western singer Rhonda Johnson in Robert Altman's final film A Prairie Home Companion (2006).
- IMDb mini biography by: tony.r.vario@gmail.com
- SpouseJane Wagner(December 31, 2013 - present)
- ChildrenNo Children
- ParentsLillie Mae TomlinGuy Tomlin
- She is still best known for her Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967) characters, Edith Ann, a precocious 5 1/2 year old girl in an oversize rocking chair, and Ernestine, a telephone operator.
- (December 31, 2013) Married her girlfriend of 42 years Jane Wagner. They met in March 1971.
- Before a performance of one of her one-woman shows in New York City, she appeared on the sidewalk dressed in a Red Cross nurse's uniform, handing out cups of coffee to those waiting in line to enter the theatre.
- In 2002, Lily Tomlin was The Women's Image Network (WIN) Awards Lifetime Achievement Honoree which Director David O. Russell presented onstage as an opera singer serenading Lily on his one bended knee.
- Studied acting under Charles Nelson Reilly, who introduced her to the works of monologist Ruth Draper, a major inspiration for Tomlin's work.
- During her one-woman show in Las Vegas, Nevada, she appeared as her own opening act: a smarmy male lounge singer billed as Tommy Velour.
- There will be sex after death - we just won't be able to feel it.
- I've been around a long time, and I interviewed with a lot of the same people over and over. I was always direct and open about my life. I would always reference Jane [Wagner] and everything, but they never choose to write about it that way -- just like they never wrote about Jack Kennedy and the women in the swimming pool. It was the times, but the media culture has changed.
- I remember back in the 70s during my really assertive days someone took me to dinner with Lola Falana. And she was talking about her backup dancers; she kept calling them her "boy dancers" so my guard was already up. Then she said "I also like John. He's a real purse nelly". I said "Excuse me? What did you just say". I was ready to go to battle. "You know," she says in her thick accent. "Purse Nelly! Pursnelly!" Then I realized she was saying he had a good personality.
- Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
- The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
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