Paula Poundstone (born
December 29, 1959) is an American
stand-up
comedian, well-known for her
self-deprecating style and masculine dress sense.
Personal life
Poundstone
was born in Huntsville,
Alabama
, and her family moved to Sudbury,
Massachusetts
, when she was young. She adopted her first
child, Thomas, in 1993. In 1997, she adopted two girls, Toshia and
Allison. Later, she adopted another son, to whom she refers as
"Thomas E."
Poundstone was a
foster mother to
several other children until 2001, when she was barred from the
foster care program following a conviction of child endangerment
for driving under the influence with a child passenger. She uses
the incident — and the publicity surrounding it — as the
source for some of her comedic material.
Poundstone is also
asexual. She stated
her asexuality in an interview with the
Dallas Voice in June of 2007, "
I'm totally
an asexual human being. I haven't dated anyone". In
her
memoirs she wrote,
Career
Poundstone
attended Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High
School
, but dropped out to pursue a show business
career. Her jobs have included bussing tables and working as
a bicycle messenger.
She started doing stand-up comedy on open mic
nights in Boston
in 1979 and
then relocated to California
. In 1984, Poundstone was cast in the movie
Hyperspace but she did not follow through on a potential
acting career. Instead she became better known as a comedian and
began appearing on several talk shows. In 1989, she won the
American Comedy Award for
"Best Female Stand-Up Comic". In 1990, she wrote and starred in an
HBO special called
Cats, Cops and Stuff
and subsequently won a
CableACE Award
for the show. She worked as a political correspondent for the
Tonight Show during the
1992 presidential
campaign. She did the same for
The Rosie O'Donnell Show
in 1996.
In 1993, Poundstone won a second CableACE Award, began writing a
regular column, "Hey, Paula!" for
Mother Jones (1993-1998), and
had a variety show,
The Paula Poundstone Show, on
ABC (which lasted only two
episodes). She was a regular panelist for the game shows
Hollywood Squares and
To Tell the Truth.
Poundstone voiced Judge Stone on
Science Court, an
edutainment cartoon series done in
Squigglevision shown on
ABC Kids in 1997.
She was the original voice of Paula Small for the first five
episodes of the cartoon series
Home Movies, which aired
on
UPN, but she left the show when it moved to
Cartoon Network and was replaced by
Janine Ditullio. The character's
name and appearance were modeled after Poundstone.
She is number 88 on
Comedy Central's
list of the 100 greatest standups of all time, and number 7 on
Maxim's list of "Worst
Comedians of All Time".
She had her own
Bravo
special as part of their three-part Funny Girls series, along with
Caroline Rhea and
Joan Rivers. It was entitled, "Look What the Cat
Dragged In."
Around the same time as her Bravo special, Poundstone also released
her first book entitled
There Is Nothing in this Book That I
Meant to Say. Described as an autobiography that is "part
memoir, part monologue", the book intertwines historical
biographies with anecdotes from her own life.
Most recently, she has appeared frequently as a panelist on the
radio news quiz show
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on
National Public Radio. Also, she is a
regular guest on
A Prairie
Home Companion, often appearing in shows in Los Angeles or
at joke shows.
Arrest
In 2001, Poundstone was arrested on a
felony
warrant for three counts of committing a lewd act on an
unidentified girl under the age of 14. The Los Angeles County
District Attorney's Office also stated that Poundstone was charged
with
endangering two other
unidentified girls and two boys. Few details were released, but the
prosecutor indicated that the charges were a result of an incident
in which Poundstone was driving her children while intoxicated. She
accepted a
plea agreement and pleaded
"no contest" to felony child
endangerment and a
misdemeanor charge of
inflicting injury on a child. In exchange, the three charges of
lewd conduct were dropped by prosecutors.
Poundstone was sentenced to five years
probation and 180 days in an alcohol
rehabilitation program. Following completion of the program, she
was granted full custody of her adopted children but permanently
lost custody of two other children who were in her home as part of
the
foster care system.
Poundstone's troubles were referenced in the
South Park episode "
Super Best Friends" and in the
Family Guy episodes "
8 Simple Rules for
Buying My Teenage Daughter" and "
Ocean's Three and a Half".
References
External links
Wikis
Quiz
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