Sarah Silverman

Sarah Kate Silverman (born December 1, 1970) is an American stand-up comedian, actress, and writer.

Sarah Kate Silverman was born on December 1, 1970, in Bedford, New Hampshire, to Beth Ann (née Halpin; 1941–2015) and Donald Silverman (1937–2023).

She was raised in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Her mother had been George McGovern's personal campaign photographer and founded the theater company New Thalian Players, while Donald trained as a social worker and also ran the clothing store, Crazy Sophie's Outlet.

Silverman's parents divorced and later married others.

Silverman is the youngest of five children.

Her sisters are Reform rabbi Susan Silverman, writer Jodyne Speyer and actress Laura Silverman; her brother Jeffrey Michael died when he was three months old.

She is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and considers herself nonreligious.

Her ancestors were from Poland and Russia, and she has stated her maternal grandmother escaped the Holocaust.

After graduating from The Derryfield School in Manchester in 1989, she attended New York University for a year, but did not graduate.

Instead, she performed stand-up in Greenwich Village.

After beginning her stand-up career in 1992, Silverman was part of the 1993–94 season of the NBC sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live (SNL) for eighteen weeks as a writer and featured player.

She was fired after one season.

Only one of the sketches she wrote made it to dress rehearsal and none aired, though she did appear on the show as a cast member in skits, usually in smaller supporting roles.

Former SNL writer Bob Odenkirk remarked, "I could see how it wouldn't work at SNL because she's got her own voice, she's very much Sarah Silverman all the time. She can play a character but she doesn't disappear into the character—she makes the character her."

Silverman has retrospectively stated that she was not ready for SNL when she secured the job, and that when she was fired, it hurt her confidence for a year but nothing could hurt her thereafter.

She has cited her SNL stint as a key reason why she has been so tough in her career, and later expressed gratitude that her time on the program was short as it did not wind up defining her.

Silverman first rose to prominence for her brief stint as a writer and cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live during its 19th season between 1993 and 1994.

She also starred in the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show (1995–1997) and had the leading role for the 1997 independent film Who's the Caboose?, about a pair of New York comedians (Silverman and director Sam Seder) going to Los Angeles during pilot season to try to get a part in a television series; the film features numerous young comedians in supporting roles but never received a widespread theatrical release.

Silverman and Seder later made a six-episode television series sequel titled Pilot Season in which Silverman stars as the same character and Seder again directed.

She parodied the situation when she appeared on The Larry Sanders Show episode "The New Writer" (1996), playing Sanders' new staff writer, whose jokes are not used because of the chauvinism and bias of the male chief comedy writer, who favors the jokes of his male co-writers.

She appeared in three episodes of Larry Sanders during its final two seasons.

Silverman made several TV program guest appearances, including on Star Trek: Voyager in the two-part time-travel episode "Future's End" (1996); Seinfeld in the episode "The Money" (1997); V.I.P. in the episode "48 1⁄2 Hours" (2002); Greg the Bunny as a series regular (2002); and on the puppet television comedy Crank Yankers as the voice of Hadassah Guberman (since 2002).

She had small parts in the films There's Something About Mary, Say It Isn't So, School of Rock, The Way of the Gun, Overnight Delivery, Screwed, Heartbreakers, Evolution, School for Scoundrels, Funny People and Rent, playing a mixture of comic and serious roles.

She has also acted in television projects such as Mr. Show and V.I.P. and starred in films, including Who's the Caboose? (1997), School of Rock (2003), Take This Waltz (2011), A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), and Battle of the Sexes (2017).

She made her network stand-up comedy debut on the Late Show with David Letterman on July 3, 1997.

In 2005, Silverman released a concert film, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic, based on her one-woman show of the same name.

Liam Lynch directed the film, which was distributed by Roadside Attractions.

It received 64% positive ratings based on 84 reviews on the film critics aggregator Web site Rotten Tomatoes and earned approximately $1.3 million at the box office.

She then starred in and produced The Sarah Silverman Program, which ran from 2007 to 2010 on Comedy Central.

For her work on the program, Silverman was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

She released an autobiography The Bedwetter in 2010 which she adapted into an off-Broadway musical in 2022.

Her comedy roles address social taboos and controversial topics, including racism, sexism, homophobia, politics, and religion, sometimes having her comic character endorse them in a satirical or deadpan fashion.

She also voiced Vanellope von Schweetz in Wreck-It Ralph (2012), and Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018).

She was in attendance when women lit menorahs at the Western Wall for the first time, in December 2014.

The first time Silverman performed stand-up comedy was in Boston at age seventeen.

She described her performance as "awful".

For her lead role in I Smile Back (2015) she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.

During the 2016 United States presidential election, she became increasingly politically active; she initially campaigned for Bernie Sanders but later spoke in support of Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

She hosted the Hulu late-night talk show I Love You, America with Sarah Silverman from 2017 until late 2018.