100 WOMEN WE LOVE 2008
Lily Tomlin’s extraordinary career as a funny lady bloomed on the TV show Laugh-In in 1969, the year of the Stonewall rebellion. Fittingly, she has woven feminism and LGBT life into her characters—the not-so-hardworking phone operator Ernestine, Violet Newstead in 9 to 5 and the numerous personas populating The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, the one-woman play written by Tomlin’s partner Jane Wagner, for which Tomlin won a Tony Award. She was also nominated for an Academy Award for her turn as Linnea Reese in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played recurring roles on TV shows from Murphy Brown to The West Wing, and has won six Emmys, a Grammy, and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award in 1977. Tomlin, who has called Wagner the most influential person in her life and career, narrated 1995’s landmark LGBT documentary The Celluloid Closet. –KL
In no particular order…
Hats off to the 100 Women We Love, class of 2008 (in no particular order, ’cause we love ’em all!).
Meghan Cavanagh
Accomplished actor Meghan Cavanagh gets a kick out of being in Chris’s (of Chris and Kris) shoes in LOGO’s prime-time lesbian series Exes and Ohs. Despite her manager’s warning that the role was “no big deal” in that it might not help her career, she pounced it. “I was glad to [represent] part of a happy, healthy couple who had been together ten years, just living their lives.” We remember Cavanagh as Marla Hooch in A League of Their Own, but her career has long run the gamut of film, TV and theatre. She’s currently recording the voice of Hilary, the dreadlocked and tattooed motorcycle-riding mom in Nickelodeon’s animated TV series The Mighty B! “I’m not sure Nickelodeon would agree with this,” Cavanagh says, “but in my opinion she is a dyke.” –JB
In no particular order…
