Lily Tomlin

Lily Tomlin: Profile

In 1969, Tomlin joined the sketch comedy show Laugh-In. Some characters from the show have been associated with her throughout her career, including the wisecracking, snorting telephone operator, Ernestine; the bratty five-year-old Edith Ann, seated in an over-sized rocking chair making rude noises while telling stories about her baby brother and pet dog Buster; and the Tasteful Lady, who lives a gracious, naїve life of entitlement in the upper class and shades of whom show up in Tomlin's film role in All of Me (see below). Additional characters include Susie the Sorority Girl, who appeared on Tomlin's album Modern Scream and in her 1975 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

Lily Tomlin is now available for celebrity appearances, corporate appearances, personal appearances, casino appearances, tradeshow appearances, convention appearances, celebrity golf tournaments, sports camps, coaching clinics, corporate sales meetings, autograph signings, endorsement deals, website endorsements, television commercials, radio commercials, store grand openings, VIP Meet & Greets, new product launch campaigns, spokesperson campaigns and speaking engagements. Book Lily Tomlin to meet and mingle with your best corporate clients, friends and business associates.

AT&T offered Tomlin US$500,000 to play her character Ernestine in a commercial, but she declined saying it would compromise her artistic integrity. However, in 1976 she did appear as Ernestine in a parody of a commercial on Saturday Night Live, in which she proclaimed, "We don't care, we don't have to...we're the phone company." The character would later make a guest appearance at The Superhighway Summit at UCLA, January 11, 1994, interrupting a speech being given on the information superhighway by then-Vice President Al Gore. In 2003, she made two commercials as Ernestine for WebEx.

Tomlin is noted for her versatility. In Robert Altman's Nashville, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, she played Linnea Reese, a straitlaced, gospel-singing, mother of two deaf children who has an affair with a country singer (played by Keith Carradine). She was also a secretary named Violet Newstead in Nine to Five, performed several comedic roles in the 1981 film The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and was a sickly heiress in the Steve Martin comedy All of Me.

In 2002, Tomlin joined the cast of the hit NBC series, The West Wing, playing President Bartlett's assistant, Debbie Fiderer--a role for which she received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series. In summer 2003, she filmed I Heart Huckabee's, a David O. Russell comedy with Dustin Hoffman, Jude Law, Naiomi Watts, and Mark Wahlberg. In the fall, returned to the cast of West Wing and was also be honored as the 2003 recipient of the prestigious Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in Washington DC.