Lily Tomlin Through the Years: From Comedy Trailblazer to Oscar Nominee and Emmy Winner
usmagazine.comA career for the history books! Lily Tomlin made her first TV appearance in 1965 — and she’s been on top of the comedy world for more than 50 years.Born in Detroit in 1939, Tomlin’s first sparked an interest in performing while she was an undergraduate at Wayne State University.
She was originally a biology major, but after auditioning for a play, she decided to start studying theater instead. After college, she began doing stand-up comedy in Detroit before moving to New York City.Tomlin landed her first TV role in a 1965 episode of The Merv Griffin Show, but her big break came four years later when she joined the sketch comedy series Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.
The I Heart Huckabees actress played numerous memorable characters throughout her four-year stint on the show, including Ernestine, a telephone operator known for her catchphrase, “One ringy dingy.”The character was so popular at one point that AT&T offered her $500,000 to play Ernestine in a commercial, but Tomlin turned it down. “I was extremely hurt and insulted,” she told The Ledger of the offer in January 2010. “I was really idealistic.
I fancied myself a satirist and they thought they could buy Ernestine.” (She ultimately revived the character for a series of WebEx ads in 2003.)Two years after leaving Laugh-In, Tomlin made her big-screen debut in Robert Altman’s Nashville, an ensemble dramedy that also starred Jeff Goldblum, Keith Carradine, Ronee Blakley and Geraldine Chaplin.
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