Biography

Born August 22, 1973 in Rochester, New York, Kristen Carroll Wiig wasn't really working towards any acting endeavors while at Brighton High school. She did her "fair share of partying," and her most memorable role was as a munchkin in an eighth-grade production of The Wizard of Oz.

She "bounced around from Roanoke University to a Rochester area community college," with an additional three months spent at Mexico's National Outdoor Leadership School, teaching other students. Finally, landing at the University of Arizona, where she majored in art, she obtained a job at a local plastic surgeon's office in graphic design, showing patients "before" and "after" pictures. However, Hollywood was calling, and she changed her mind and moved to Los Angeles, two days before she was to start.

After arriving in Los Angeles, Kristen worked at a variety of places, including The Hollywood Hot Dog Company, and the Farmers Market. She answered phones, worked as a floral designer, and as a cashier/window display designer for the clothing chain Anthropologie. She worked for three years in Los Angeles without an acting job, until attending a comedy show and being inspired to try improv.

She joined the renowned The Groundlings comedy troupe and quickly advanced through the group, then landed minor parts on the sitcoms The Drew Carey Show and I'm With Her.

In 2003, Kristen appeared on Spike TV's reality experiment The Joe Schmo Show as "Dr. Pat," the three-times divorced marriage-counselor. The show, a send-up of reality shows, centered around an everyday "joe" being duped on thinking he's competing in a reality show, "Lap of Luxury," only to learn at the show's finale that he was the only "real" person on the show - everybody else was a paid actor. In the title sequence, Kristen was introduced as 'Dr. Pat - the "quack." The joe, Matt Kennedy Gould, later said he was highly impressed by Kristen's acting.

Her manager sent in a tape of her Groundlings performances to SNL in 2005, and Kristen auditioned twice. The new season began, and NBC hadn't contacted her, so she assumed she'd been rejected. After a call from NBC, she joined the cast on a Wednesday before the Friday rehearsal. In her audition, she did impressions of Megan Mullally, Drew Barrymore, Bjork, Jennifer Tilly, Jessica Simpson, and Laura Bush. Kristen first appeared on the the show as a "featured player" November 12, 2005.

She soon became a regular, surviving an employee-cut the following year, and quickly assured her place in SNL history, with several recurring characters that found instant fans.

Since appearing on SNL, Kristen's quickly racked up a number of feature film credits, including Walk Hard, Knocked Up and The Brothers Solomon. She's become a member of the Apatow gang, and has made several appearances in Apatow-produced movies and on special features on the DVDs.

In the future, she'd like to direct and have her own tv show. Currently, she's writing a screenplay for Judd Apatow, in which she'll star.

Biography by Bri

sources:

Radar January 2008
IMDB.com
Page Six magazine January 2008
Elle September 2007
Vanity Fair April 2008