Garofalo, Janeane
From Make Me Heal
"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."
Janeane Garofalo's style in comedy is cynical, harsh, and yet somehow still charming. Janeane began working in stand-up comedy and then moved into television in the early '90s, part of Ben Stiller's one season on Fox, and then as a regular on The Larry Sanders Show. Janeane appeared in independently produced comedies such as Reality Bites (1994, with Winona Ryder) and The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996, with Uma Thurman), as well as more dramatic roles such as those she took on in Cop Land (1997, with Sylvester Stallone) and Permanent Midnight (1998). Garofalo was in several other movies from 1998 to 2000, including The Minus Man (1999), Mystery Men (1999, with Hank Azaria and Paul Reubens), 200 Cigarettes (1999, with Ben Affleck) and the animated Titan A. E. (2000, with Matt Damon and Drew Barrymore). In 2004 Garofalo made the leap to radio as co-host of Majority Report (with Sam Seder), a syndicated show critical of the George W. Bush administration.
