A petite (5’1″) dark-haired smartly cynical comedian and actress, Janeane (pronounced JAH-neen) Garofalo began her career performing standup material at “open mike” nights in East Coast nightclubs. After winning a cable TV contest to find the funniest person in Rhode Island and graduating from Providence College, she settled in Boston where she held odd jobs (i.e., bike messenger, receptionist at a heath club) while pursuing a career as a comic. Garofalo found limited success until she moved to Los Angeles in late 1989. Receiving early exposure on MTV’s “Half Hour Comedy Hour”, she found her neurotic hipster persona and sometimes controversial observations on pop culture appealed to her contemporaries. Meeting actor-director Ben Stiller in an L.A. deli also proved fortuitous as he tapped Garofalo to be a member of the ensemble of his Fox comedy-variety series in 1992. Simultaneously, she landed the role of the acerbic talent booker Paula on the superior HBO sitcom “The Larry Sanders Show”. Although the Stiller show only lasted for 13 episodes (Fox aired only 12 with the final one later showing up on Comedy Central in 1995), Garofalo found herself in demand. She briefly was a regular cast member of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” before serving as a special correspondent for Michael Moore’s “TV Nation” (NBC, 1994) and hosting and co-producing “Comedy Product” (Comedy Central, 1995). Garofalo headlined her own HBO special in 1995 and continued to lend her sardonic wit to awards shows (and “The Larry Sanders Show”) throughout the decade. In 1997, she made a rare dramatic appearance as the assistant to a murdered film studio executive in a two-part episode of NBC’s “Law & Order”.
