Lily Tomlin is an American actress, producer, singer, comedian, and writer who is best known for roles on television shows such as ‘Laugh-In’ and ‘Grace and Frankie’ and films such as ‘Nashville’ and ‘Nine to Five.’ Her other notable films include All of Me (1984), Big Business (1988), Flirting with Disaster (1996), Tea with Mussolini (1999), I Heart Huckabees (2004), and Grandma (2015).
Tomlin is also popular as the voice of Ms. Frizzle in the children’s series The Magic School Bus. In 1974, she won a Grammy Award for her comedy album This Is a Recording. She was given Kennedy Center Honors in 2014 and also received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2017.
Early Life
Lily Tomlin was born September 1, 1939, in Detroit, Michigan, to parents Guy Tomlin, a factory worker, and Lillie Mae, a housewife and nurse’s aide. Tomlin has a younger brother called Richard Tomlin.
She attended Cass Technical High School. After graduating from high school in 1957, Tomlin went to Wayne State University and pursued biology. While at school, she auditioned for a play, which sparked her interest in a career in the theatre. So, she changed her major.
Just after college, Tomlin started doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs in Detroit and later in New York City. In 1965, she made her first television appearance on The Merv Griffin Show. A year later, she became a cast member of The Garry Moore Show.
Career
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In
After making appearances on The Merv Griffin Show and on Music Scene, Tomlin joined NBC’s sketch comedy show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In in 1969, which catapulted her to stardom. She signed as a replacement for the departing Judy Carne and became an instant success in the already established program. She started appearing as the regular characters she created in addition to making appearances in general sketches and delivering comic gags.
Audiences fell in love with Tomlin’s hilarious characters, including Edith Ann, a mischievous 6-year-old, Ernestine, a snarky telephone operator, and Lucille the Rubber Freak, a woman addicted to eating rubber. Tomlin featured on the show until it went off the air in 1973.
Recordings
In 1972, Tomlin released her first comedy album This Is A Recording, on Polydor Records. The album hit No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 200, becoming the highest-charting album ever by a solo comedian. Tomlin earned a Grammy Award the same year for Best Comedy Recording.
Tomlin later released her second album, And That’s The Truth, which peaked at No. 41 on the chart and earned her another Grammy nomination. Her third comedy album, 1975’s Modern Scream, featured her performing as multiple characters, including Suzie, Judith, Edith Ann, and Ernestine.
Tomlin, along with Barry Manilow, recorded a single/EP called “The Last Duet.”
Other Big Screen Hits
Tomlin made her dramatic debut in Robert Altman’s Nashville, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Other big screen hits included The Late Show (1977) with Art Carney; Moment By Moment (1978) with John Travolta and written by Wagner; Nine to Five (1980) with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton; The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) with Charles Grodin and written by Wagner; All of Me (1984) with Steve Martin; Big Business (1988) with Bette Midler; Shadows and Fog (1993) directed by Woody Allen; Short Cuts (1993) directed by Altman; Flirting with Disaster (1996) with Ben Stiller; and Tea With Mussolini (1999) with Cher and Judi Dench and directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
Tomlin then took a break from the big screen and later resurfaced with I Heart Huckabees (2004) with Dustin Hoffman, directed by David O. Russell, and A Prairie Home Companion (2006). She also featured in Pink Panther II (2009) with Martin, Admission (2013) with Paul Rudd and Tina Fey, and Grandma (2015), directed by Paul Weitz.
Personal Life
Lily Tomlin owns two homes in Los Angeles, California.
She is married to Jane Wagner, the love of her life to whom they met in March 1971. After watching the after-school TV special J.T. written by Wagner, Tomlin had invited Wagner to collaborate on her comedy LP album, And That’s The Truth. The two began dating but did not formally come out: Tomlin said in 2006:
“I certainly never called a press conference or anything like that. Back in the 1970s, people didn’t write about it. Even if they knew, they would refer to Jane as “Lily’s collaborator,” things like that. Some journalists are just motivated by their own sense of what they want to say or what they feel comfortable saying or writing about. In ‘77, I was on the cover of Time. The same week I had a big story in Newsweek. In one of the magazines it says I live alone, and the other magazine said I live with Jane Wagner. Unless you were so really adamantly out, and had made some declaration at some press conference, people back then didn’t write about your relationship. In ‘75 I was making the Modern Scream album, and Jane and I were in the studio. My publicist called me and said, “Time will give you the cover if you’ll come out.” I was more offended than anything that they thought we’d make a deal. But that was ‘75– it would have been hard to do at that time.”
On December 31, 2013, Tomlin and Wagner married in a private ceremony in Los Angeles after 42 years together.