Lily Tomlin is is best known for creating a multitude of memorable comic characters, including Ernestine (the "One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy..." telephone operator) and Edith Ann (the precocious five year old), but let it not be forgotten that she is also a talented dramatic actress. Born Mary Tomlin in Detroit, Michigan, she was studying premed at Wayne State University when she heard the stage calling and so dropped out to perform skits and characterizations in cabarets and coffeehouses.

She first shot to fame in 1970 when she joined the cast of the slapstick sketch show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Her movies include Robert Altman's Nashville and Short Cuts, Nine to Five with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, All of Me with Steve Martin, Big Business with Bette Midler, Flirting with Disaster with Ben Stiller, and I Heart Huckabees with Dustin Hoffman.

She also narrated and executive produced The Celluloid Closet, the 1995 documentary on how homosexuality has been portrayed in Hollywood films. On TV, Tomlin played Candice Bergen's boss on the last two seasons of Murphy Brown, the voice of Ms. Frizzle on The Magic School Bus, and Martin Sheen's secretary on The West Wing.

Tomlin's 1986 one-woman show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, was a long-running critical success. It won Tomlin a Tony, and was made into a film in 1991.