Tina Fey

Comedy actress/writer of Saturday Night Live and Thirty Rock fame, who seems destined to be remembered as "that woman who looks like Sarah Palin" (or vice versa). She was also the writer of Mean Girls.

Acting-wise, Fey's specialty seems to be in playing neurotic women with a droll sense of humor and varying degrees of nerdiness, a persona apparently based on herself. Thanks to this as well as her glasses, she is seen by some as proof that Nerds Are Sexy in Real Life. She does not actually need glasses all the time, however - she merely wore them on Weekend Update since she is nearsighted and would not have been able to read her cues otherwise. However, the glasses became so iconic that she frequently appears with them in her acting roles. This was Lampshaded in an episode of 30 Rock in which it was stated that she actually didn't even need glasses.

Fey's physical resemblance to former Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin was played with by having Fey make guest appearances on SNL as Palin. In the first Fey-as-Palin sketch, Amy Poehler (as Hillary Clinton) made reference at one point to her "Tina Fey glasses". It was further played with when Palin herself (who had earlier dressed up as Fey one Halloween) made an appearance on the show with Fey, both wearing the same outfit. And an incident where show host Alec Baldwin started bad-mouthing Sarah Palin because he thought he was talking to Tina Fey... only to be told by Palin herself that he was actually talking to Palin.

Her memoir, Bossypants, was released in 2011, and reveals much about her views on life, her rise to stardom, and her misadventures involving mountain climbing, the YMCA, and cruise ships catching on fire. It Makes Sense in Context, just buy the book.

Tropes which apply to Tina Fey:


 * A Cup Angst: Occasionally played for laughs on SNL.
 * Bilingual Bonus On the 5/8/10 episode of SNL (the one with Betty White) she reprised part of her Weekend Update role with a Greek version of "Really?"
 * Brainy Brunette (in real life and in most of her roles)
 * Defictionalization: Sarah Palin never actually said "I can see Russia from my house!" (she said Alaskans can see Russia, technically true for the few residents of tiny Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait), but a lot of people seem to think she did after the Memetic Mutation of a line that originated with Fey on SNL.
 * Another Palin example: in the SNL episode with John McCain and Palin (played by Fey), she calls her last-minute "Palin 2012" shirt sale as "going rogue." Guess what Sarah Palin's biography is titled?
 * Dream Team: With Steve Carell in Date Night? Pure comedy gold.
 * Jimmy Fallon and Tina Fey as the Weekend Update team were great. Fey and Amy Poehler? Easily the best newscasters in ages.
 * Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin on Thirty Rock as Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghey, respectively. You can feel the awesome emanating from your TV/Computer/iDevice.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners (with former Weekend Update coanchor and frequent film collaborator Amy Poehler)
 * I Can See My House From Here: Inverted. You know the line.
 * Meganekko
 * Noodle Incident: For many years, she refused to discuss her facial scar. In 2008, she revealed that it was the result of a stranger attacking her with a knife when she was a child.
 * One of Us
 * Sesame Street Cred
 * Show Runner
 * Take That: Perhaps understandably annoyed that 30 Rock, the big breakthrough of her career, had to share the NBC spotlight with the much more-hyped, much better-funded Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Fey heaped scorn on the latter show for years. Accepting an award at a fancy celebration, Fey said, "I hear Aaron Sorkin is wearing the same dress I am, but it's twice as long and not nearly as funny." To his credit, the famously thin-skinned Sorkin never responded, and even put in a self-deprecatory cameo on 30 Rock.
 * Verbal Tic (referring to people as "this gentleman" or "this lady")