TINA FEY MY LIFE IN 10 Pictures

WHILE GOING to high school in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Stamatina Fey was, as she once told Today, “a high-functioning nerd: editor of the school paper, in choir, but not cool.”

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Yet with her work on Saturday Night Live, Mean Girls, 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina has done more to make “nerdy” the new “sexy” than almost anyone else. As she shared in her book Bossypants, “If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important rule in beauty, which is: Who cares?” That self-assurance has served her well, not only in her 23-year marriage to husband Jeff Richmond, but also raising daughters Alice and Penelope, who have “made me so happy.” These days Tina, who turns 55 on May 18, says she’s happy to play it cool even if she may not feel that way. As she confessed to Oprah Winfrey, “I feel like I am at an age where all the things I ever thought I wanted to do, I did them. And so like I’m trying to be quiet and take things in. I’m waiting for something inside me to tell what the next thing is I want to do.”

1 2000 GOING LIVE After joining Saturday Night Live as a writer in 1997, Tina made the leap to the anchor's desk of "Weekend Update" alongside pal Jimmy Fallon. But she'll be the first to admit the transition was anything but easy. "You never have that fear and disappointment that sketch players have," she shared. "And it's the only segment where you tell America your name. So it's career changing."