Her breast reduction, vegas wedding and "sell out" weight loss

Over time, these three events helped shape Janeane Garofalo's life. Here, she talks about thse significant moments and the defining years -- ages 9, 15 and 20 -- that have made her the woman she is today. As told to Jennifer Wolff

JANEANE AT 9
-

My cynicism started to rear its head by the time I was 9. I despised going to school and the day-to-day monotony. I hated getting up early. I rebelled against any kind of organized fun. I was a lazy rebel who questioned authority and religion. I resented having to believe that a woman came from the rib of a man.

     I was neither a tomboy nor a girlie girl, and like today, I had just as many male friends as female ones. When I was younger, my older brother Michael and I were very close. He treated me like his precious doll, and I idolized him. I used to say that when I grew up, I would marry him. But I was definitely a brat, and I think he's been disappointed in my enthusiasm as a family member ever since.

     I was about 9 when I saw my first Woody Allen film, Take the Money and Run, which for me was life-changing. I became obsessed with comedy, and with Woody Allen and his New York-y intellectual humor. I also hung out in my brother's room a lot when he wasn't there. He had a stereo, and I'd sit there memorizing comedy albums from Cheech & Chong and George Carlin. It was around then that I also got obsessed with Saturday Night Live, SCTV and Monty Python.

     When I was 9, we moved from Houston to Madison, New Jersey, and I started fifth grade. That's when I met Susan Byrd, the most beautiful girl in school, and became popular by association. She was a Woody Allen fan, too. She made me laugh so hard, and she still does.

     I was 8 or 9 when a baby sitter allowed us to watch Lipstick on HBO, the movie with Margaux Hemingway about a brutal rape. It really fucked me up and I developed a tremendous fear of sex and intimacy. I'd had a very idyllic suburban upbringing, and I was too young to have seen something like that.

     I remember French-kissing a guy in sixth grade while a bunch of us were seeing some movie and everyone was making out like crazy. I told my parents, and their reaction made me feel like there was something wrong with sex. My Irish Grandma Crane also lived with us for seven years and really hammered home the point that good girls don't have sex and sex is bad. She was very hard-core.

JANEANE AT 15
-

Throughout junior high, I wanted to be a secretary just like my mom. But when I was 15, I saw David Letterman for the first time. I had to sneak to watch him at 12:30 a.m., because I wasn't allowed to stay up that late. I loved his very dry, intelligent and ironic sense of humor. I loved how he went into a store called Just Bulbs and asked what else they sold. That's when I decided I was going to move to New York to work as a page at NBC, and then as a writer for Late Night.

     My 15th year was really important, because it was when I met all these guys who went to a nearby prep school. They were really witty, articulate, well-read guys who didn't care about sports. They would have been considered uncool by most high school standards, but in fact, they were way more cool. I'm still in touch with one of them, Jim. I always had a huge, huge crush on him, but I was too scared to tell him. We did go to a dance and hold hands every once in a while. But mostly in high school, I wasn't dating or having sex. I didn't even have a libido.

     My mother and I were very close. We talked about everything. She learned early on that if she let me be chatty and kept her opinion to herself, she would get lots of dirt on me. Like the first time I smoked pot, I got very nervous and woke her up. She took me down to the kitchen and we ate some Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies and talked.

     Around that time, I read Fast Times at Ridgemont High by Cameron Crowe. I was shocked that all of that shit was going on -- that people were dressing up like Pat Benatar, driving fancy cars, having abortions and dating older men.

     Makeup and fashion were never issues for me. My best friend, Susan, was so extraordinarily beautiful that strangers would sometimes stop her on the street. Older guys would ask me, "Who's your friend? Can you introduce us?" It hurt my feelings. I started putting two and two together: Unless you were an attractive female, you were actually a nonentity. It didn't make me change my ways, though, and I'm proud of that.

     Now when I'm in a bar, a lot of men talk to me. Sometimes they pretend not to know who I am, but I know they do, because for years I went to bars and no guys ever struck up conversations with me. It's like, "Where were you until now?" They think I'm impressed that they don't know who I am. But if someone says he knows who I am, I'm more open than when he talks to me for a while and asks, "So, what do you do?"

     My senior year in high school was hard, because we moved back to Texas and I was very depressed. I got super-fat, like 150 pounds, and was horrifyingly unpopular. My new high school was one that valued football and drill teams.

     By the time I went to Providence College at 18, I still weighed 150 pounds, so you can imagine what freshman year was like. For two years, I was a total odd man out, going to the lunchroom and having no one to sit with. If I bumped into myself at that age, I would tell myself not to sweat it so badly, that it's not such a tragedy.

     All this turned around during my sophomore year, when Marybeth Boller -- again, one of the most popular and beautiful girls around -- decided that she and I should be friends. I don't know how it happened that I would twice befriend the most popular and most beautiful girls in school, except that we just clicked.

JANEANE AT 20
-

When I was 20, I decided I was going to be a stand-up comic. I realized I would rather write for myself and perform than write for someone else. My goal was to be a regular on Letterman, like Jay Leno and Richard Lewis. My parents were like, "Oh no, do stand-up as a hobby, but not as a job." They were convinced there was no future in it.

     One of the first things I did to move forward with my career was to get a breast reduction. I was a 36C or D, and at 5'1", I knew that being a small person with big boobs standing in front of an audience was not going to be easy. It would be really hard to get people to pay attention to me without mocking me.

     Getting a breast reduction to prepare for my career was no different from people who work to get good grades to get into a good college to get into a good graduate school to get a good job. I went down to a B cup, and it was the best thing in the whole world, like a new lease on life. Nobody knew; everyone thought I had just lost weight. It wasn't painful, as I recall, but I do have some unfortunate scars that I don't like anyone to see. Maybe one day I can get them to blend in with the tattoos on my stomach.

     When I went back to school that fall, I decided to actually start doing stand-up. I went to Periwinkles in Providence and entered Showtime's "Funniest Person In Rhode Island" contest. God knows who the fuck was judging it. That I won the contest was a testament to the lack of talent of the other participants. I had written some notes on my arm and hand, and the only reason I got laughs is because every time I said something, I had to look at my hand. Of course, I bombed almost every time I went onstage for two years afterward.

     Later in my senior year, I lost my virginity to Barry, the first person I fell in love with. I was heavy, but he didn't give a shit. He loved me. After that, I realized I wasn't afraid of sex anymore. I didn't start drinking until I was 24. If I had started earlier, I would have been sexually active sooner. Barry and I stayed together for a couple of years, and we both moved to Boston after graduation. I was doing a lot of stand-up then, and working a variety of day jobs, like selling shoes and bike messengering. Barry and I broke up when I moved back to Houston, which I did both because the comedy scene was booming there but also, unfortunately, because my mom was dying of colon cancer.

     I had always been incredibly close to my mother, but her death wasn't agonizing because it wasn't sudden. We had been very vocal about how much we loved each other. I spent a lot of time with her before she passed away, but sadly, I wasn't there when she did die.

     I moved to L.A. and dated other comics. I've had a good track record with enlightened, interesting guys, although I've never had a lot of long relationships. When I was 27, a bunch of The Ben Stiller Show writers got married in a drive-through chapel in Las Vegas. I married my boyfriend at the time -- it was a joke. We never got divorced, but if I wanted to get married again, it shouldn't be a problem -- no one would investigate.

     But I don't want to get married. Neither does my boyfriend, a drummer in a band in Boston who might be moving in with me in New York. If we were to get pregnant, we would have the baby, but I really don't want children. I don't want to go through adolescence with a kid. Some of the things I see going on between teenagers in the streets really bothers me. I don't like how they talk to one another or how they treat one another. Ask me again in five years.

JANEANE today
-

Success hasn't changed me much, except that I make a lot more money than I did when I was selling shoes. And more people ask me what time it is and where the bathroom is and bum cigarettes from me. But I'm not so hugely famous and recognizable that I can't go out without a disguise.

     Even though I'm not indulgent, I am the sort of person who, when something is broken, would rather just get another one. I'll always get a $5 hazelnut latte and Starbucks rather than deli coffee. I buy $5 packs of underwear just to avoid doing my laundry. I shop at Gap and at thrift stores.

     I like my lifestyle because it permits me to travel when I want and buy stuff when I want. And it enables me to send my dogs, Dewey and Kid, to "Camp Canine" in Malibu, a three-acre facility that hosts only 10 dogs at a time. They go once a year, and it costs a lot of money. Those dogs run my life. They don't live with me; I live with them.

     The one thing I feel really bad about in my life is that I don't keep in touch with my extended family. Everyone else loves getting together, but these functions make me feel very awkward. I usually go off and read or feel the urgent need to lay down and go to sleep. I don't mean this offensively. I just find that my conversational skills are severely tested whenever I am around them.

     But I am really close with my dad. Our relationship picked up after my mother died, and we talk on the phone and bullshit about everything. He has very strict rules of decorum. Like, he would never offer a job to a guy with an earring even if he was the most qualified person. This kind of thing makes no sense to me.

     I've always tried to be pragmatic and realistic about my looks. For most of my career, my weight has vacillated between 115 and 140 pounds. But I'm not proud of losing weight -- it's been a sell out. I lost weight so I could be considered for a wider range of acting jobs. I don't pretend that it's a health kick or that it's just to feel better about myself. I'm smoking a lot more -- about a half a pack to two packs a day -- and drinking more coffee and Diet Coke and more water, which I hate. I joined Crunch gym and went for three weeks, but then I stopped because I couldn't handle the workouts. I continue to fantasize about what I really want to eat every fucking day. I don't think I'm sexy, but I do get a lot more compliments now. I just don't take them as compliments.

     It hurt my feelings when Joan and Melissa Rivers criticized me on their show, E! Asshole Report, otherwise known as E! Special: "Emmy Fashion Review." It was after I had presented an award at the Emmys. I had such a good time at the show, and then while I was channel-surfing, I saw Joan saying that I was a pig and a bag lady. Worse than bag lady, even -- actually, an insult to bag ladies. I had worn a brown sweater and tight black flared pants because I don't believe in spending a lot of money to preen along the red carpet. No one interviewed me; they just showed footage of me and the two of them went nuts over how bad I looked. Melissa said something weird, like, "Janeane's not ... unattractive. She's got a nice smile." What do I think of Joan and Melissa? If we're playing by their rules? It's unfortunate: They didn't win the genetic lottery. That's cruel, but they have more than asked for it.

     What the fuck is their show about, anyway? Once, they went after Kate Winslet, and I was like, What? She's so beautiful; she's a work of art. And then to say, "She sunk the Titanic," or whatever, is just crazy shit. That can only serve to make the average American who is sitting on her couch watching the show say to herself, "If they're picking on Kate Winslet, then I don't know if I can leave the house."

     Right now, I have two movies slated to come out: The Independent, which I did with Jerry Stiller; and Steal This Movie, in which I play Anita Hoffman, Abbie Hoffman's partner and wife. This was probably one of the best times I've ever had on a movie. I really pushed to get the role. I had to show the director and Anita -- who recently died -- that I was earnest and the best person for the part, and that I just really wanted it.

     These days, I'm really content to spend a lot of time in New York and not to have to live by my alarm clock. This is one of the only cities where I feel safe walking around at 4 a.m. I never cook and love to order from Benny's Burritos or get a salad from Healthy Pleasures. I don't think I'm going to stay thin, because I'm not genetically disposed to being thin. But I'm happy -- and that's whether I'm starving myself or eating a hazelnut walnut brownie.

marie claire
Back to Janeane Garofalo