Tina Fey
The Times Magazine, June 2010
The best gift you can give a child is a mix of discipline and encouragement. My parents were never laissez-faire but they were consistent in the boundaries they imposed and always generous and supportive to my brother and I. I'm forever grateful that they set me clear limits yet helped me to build my own self-confidence.
I'd never want my daughter (Alice, four-and-a-half) to think there's any extra importance attached to someone just because they're famous. She loves to come and see me on the set of 30 Rock but I always emphasise to her all the different jobs being done there by different people and that, as in any worthwhile workplace, it is all about the team.
The very useful lesson you learn doing improv is that in life you can fail and survive. Let that white hot feeling of failure wash right over you and just keep on going. It is so not the end of the world, however much it feels like it at the time.
You've got to be quick to survive in New York City. I'm from Chicago, which is hardly Hicksville, but in comparison Manhattan where I now live is very fast-moving, fast-talking, and any transaction is fastfastfast, Everything's relative, of course. If I spend any time in California and go to the grocery store, I'm like, 'Oh-my-God! Why does everyone here move so s-l-o-w-l-y?'
You've also tend to have to be thin to make it in NYC. And can I just say that I thought it was very funny that 'Nothing tastes as good as thin feels' got attributed to Kate Moss? That's an old WeightWatchers slogan, as I know from personal experience. Maybe the real story is that she's a lifetime member ...?
Big muscles on a man work for a lot of women and certainly when Mark Wahlberg was on the Date Night set (he appears shirtless with Fey in several scenes) a lot of female execs found excuses to drop by. Empirically he is very handsome, of course, but to all those guys out there in gyms, intent on bulking up ... You should, of course, and God bless you, but just not on my account.
Sometimes career advancement comes down to serendiptiy. That people should decide I looked a little like Sarah Palin at a time when she was becoming such a media sensation herself was a perfect storm. At the time we on Saturday Night Live started doing those sketches, she was being presented in a very controlled way and we were the first to poke any holes in that packaging. She was very pleasant and game when I actually met her but then I didn't expect her to be otherwise. You have to be thick-skinned to be in public life in that way and she didn't seem at all intimidated to be there with us.
In any longstanding relationship, you have to make a conscious effort to pay special attention to each other. My husband and I (composer Jeff Richmond) have been married for nine years. We both work a lot and also try to spend every free moment we have with our daughter so yes, like the couple in Date Night we do have to make that conscious effort to schedule in some 'us' time. When you're both tired it can feel a little like going to the gym though. 'We'll be so glad we did this ... afterwards!'
Maybe because it came to me a little later in life, I don't take my current success for granted. I realise I'm in a lucky place in my career and in my life right now but it is not at all to be considered a permanent state. Not having had the same level of attention at 20 or 25, I've been able to build a real life for myself, one that hopefully will endure long after this fame thing crashes and burns.
Copyright © 2020 Alan Jackson