Tina Fey: My Career Took Off After Losing 30 Pounds

Tina Fey opens up about dropping 30 pounds for Saturday Night Live, her facial scar and remaining a virgin until her 20s in the January issue of Vanity Fair.

LOSING WEIGHT

Fey, 38, says her career took off after she dropped 30 pounds with Weight Watchers.

“I’m five-foot-four-and-a-half, and I think I was maxing out at just short of 150 pounds, which isn’t so big. But when you move to New York from Chicago, you feel really big,” says the 30 Rock star - who started working in comedy in the Windy City.

Adds Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond (who composes the music for his wife’s award-winning sitcom): “She was quite round in a lovely, turn-of-the-century kind of round - that beautiful, Rubenesque kind of beauty.”

Fey says she knew she had to drop the weight after catching a glimpse of herself in an SNL monitor as an extra.

“I was like, ‘Ooogh.’ I was starting to look unhealthy,” she says. “I looked like a behemoth, a little bit. It was probably a bad sweater or something. [Or] maybe cutting from Gwyneth Paltrow to me.”

She called her husband that day and announced: “OK, I’m starting Weight Watchers.”

The diet worked - too well. As Fey’s star was on the rise - she took over as “Weekend Update” anchor and became the show’s head writer - the cast grew worried about her becoming too slim.

“I got to that thing that’s so enjoyable where people tell you, ‘Oh, you’re thin, you’ve gotten too thin,’” Fey says. “[SNL creator Lorne Michaels] was like, ‘Please, please make sure you’re eating.’”

Now the actress has found a happy medium, but still watches her weight.

“The most I’ve changed pictures out of vanity was to edit around any shot where you can see my butt,” she says. “I like to look goofy, but I also don’t want to get canceled because of my big old butt.”

The star - who blames her curves on the “Greek-girl thing, I have, like, boobs and butt” draws the line at cosmetic surgery though.

“I don’t have botox or anything,” she says.

HER FACIAL SCAR

Fey opens up about the faint scar that runs along her left cheek, which was the result of a cutting attack by a stranger when she was five years old.

“It was in, like, the front yard of her house, and somebody who just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen,” her husband says.

Adds Fey, who rarely speaks about the incident: “It’s impossible to talk about it without somehow seemingly exploiting it and glorifying it.”

Growing up, Fey didn’t feel self-conscious, “because I proceeded unaware of it. I was a very confident little kid. It’s really almost like I’m kind of able to forget about it, until I was on-camera, and it became a thing of ‘Oh, I guess we should use this side’ or whatever. Everybody’s got a better side,” she says.

How has the attack affected her as a mother to three-year-old daughter Alice?

“Supposedly, I will go crazy,” says. “My therapist says, ‘When Alice is the age that you were, you may go crazy.”‘

REMAINING A VIRGIN

Fey also admits that she wasn’t very popular growing up.

“I really didn’t have very many dates at all. And that’s not an exaggeration. But also, I don’t think we should discount the fact that unplucked eyebrows and short hair with a perm may not have been the best
offering, either.”

In fact, “I remember bringing people over in high school to play—that’s how cool I am—that game Celebrity. That’s how I successfully remained a virgin well into my 20s, bringing gay boys over to play Celebrity.”

SARAH PALIN IMPERSONATIONS

Fey also responds to the criticism that she was too hard on Sarah Palin with her impersonations.

“What made me super-mad about it, was that it seemed very sexist toward me and her,” she says. “The implication was that she’s so fragile, which she is not. She’s a strong woman.

“And then, also, it was sexist because, like, who would ever go [and say], ‘Well, I thought it was sort of mean to Richard Nixon when Dan Aykroyd played him,’ and ‘That seemed awful mean to George Bush when Will Ferrell did it.’”

(source)