Sarah Silverman
(born December 1, 1970, Bedford,
New Hampshire
, U.S.) is an American comedian, actress, and writer known for her subversive pointed commentaries on the social construction of race, gender, and
religion
.
Silverman’s father was a clothing store owner, and her mother was a photographer and
theatre
director. She and her three older sisters were raised in
Manchester
, New Hampshire, and then in Bedford, New Hampshire, following their parents’ divorce. Silverman characterized her upbringing as liberal and free of boundaries, with her father actively encouraging her use of profanity for his own amusement and her mother instilling in her a sense of
skepticism
and inquiry. Ever antic and eager to perform, Silverman began appearing in
community
theatre and school productions as an adolescent. However, she suffered from
depression
beginning at an early age and dealt with a
bed-wetting
problem that lasted into her teen years, issues she related in her memoir
The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee
(2010).
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She first tried
stand-up comedy
in a Boston club at age 17. After enrolling at
New York University
to study drama, Silverman began distributing flyers for, and then performing at,
New York City
comedy
clubs. She dropped out of school after a year, encouraged by her father, and concentrated on performance. In 1993 she was hired by
Saturday Night Live
but was fired after having only appeared in several segments and without a single sketch that she had written having been aired.
Nonetheless, Silverman persisted, and in 1995?97 she performed on the sketch comedy program
Mr. Show with Bob and David
. She also made a number of appearances on
Garry Shandling
’s
seminal
talk show
satire
The Larry Sanders Show
. Silverman continued to hone her blithely savage comic style in clubs and on talk shows. She often adopted a cheerfully narcissistic persona during her act, delivering lines about race and sex in an ironically
insipid
tone. Her feigned obliviousness and hyperbolic assertions indicated an underlying liberal sensibility. Nonetheless, some observers found her take on the subjects offensive. In a 2001 segment on
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
, she used a slur against Chinese people in a joke. Some charged that Silverman was being insensitive to racial issues, while she countered that it was in fact
racism
, not
race
, that she was mocking.
Silverman returned to television on the
surreal
sitcom
Greg the Bunny
(2002?04) and did voice work on a variety of comedy shows, notably the puppet show
Crank Yankers
(2002?07). Her first television stand-up special,
Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
, aired in 2005. Silverman then went on to star in her own series,
The Sarah Silverman Program
(2007?10), in which she portrayed herself as an insensitive and unlikable boor, much as she did onstage. She presented a video of her parody song “I’m F***ing Matt Damon,” in which
Damon
costarred, on her then boyfriend
Jimmy Kimmel
’s talk show. It won an
Emmy Award
for outstanding original music and lyrics in 2008. Another stand-up special,
Sarah Silverman: We Are Miracles
(2013), won an Emmy for best writing for a variety special. Though retaining her signature
disregard
for propriety, the material was less reliant on the clueless character that had served as the vehicle for much of her commentary. Silverman continued to make occasional television guest appearances on shows such as
Masters of Sex
, about sex researchers
Masters and Johnson
, and the animated comedy
Bob’s Burgers
. She hosted the talk show
I Love You, America
(2017?18), which humourously addressed the country’s dissension following the
2016 U.S. presidential election
.
Silverman’s early
film
work consisted mainly of small roles in such comedies as
There’s Something About Mary
(1998),
Heartbreakers
(2001), and
School of Rock
(2003). She later voiced one of the main characters, Vanellope von Schweetz, in the computer-animated children’s film
Wreck-It Ralph
(2012) and its sequel,
Ralph Breaks the Internet
(2018). Silverman also played a prostitute waiting to
consummate
her relationship with her fiance until they marry in
Seth MacFarlane
’s goofball comedy
A Million Ways to Die in the West
(2014). She won
accolades
for her dramatic performances as a recovering alcoholic in
Take This Waltz
(2011) and a substance-abusing adulterous suburban mother in
I Smile Back
(2015). Her later film credits included the thriller
The Book of Henry
(2017) and the biopic
Battle of the Sexes
(2017), which recounts the
1973 tennis match
between
Billie Jean King
and
Bobby Riggs
.
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Silverman’s other works included a
musical adaptation of her memoir
Bedwetter
. She cowrote the book and lyrics for the production, which premiered
Off-Broadway
in 2022.