Lily Tomlin
The comedian behind Ernestine the telephone operator has shared her life and work with writer Jane Wagner since 1971.
Lily Tomlin grew up in a working-class neighbourhood of Detroit, where she observed her neighbours closely – they later became the models for her characters. She started in stand-up comedy and off-Broadway in New York in the 1960s.
Her breakthrough came in 1969 on the television comedy show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In”, with characters such as Ernestine, the sarcastic telephone operator, and Edith Ann, a precocious five-year-old in a giant rocking chair. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Robert Altman’s “Nashville” (1975) and starred in the comedy “9 to 5” (1980) with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton.
In 1971 she met the writer Jane Wagner, who became her partner in life and work. Wagner wrote Tomlin’s one-woman show “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe” (1985), for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. For years their relationship was an open secret in show business; Tomlin spoke about it more openly from the 2000s, and the two married in 2013.
From 2015 to 2022 she starred with Jane Fonda in the Netflix series “Grace and Frankie”. She has won numerous Emmy Awards, a Grammy and the Kennedy Center Honors.