Paula Poundstone Biography

Paula Poundstone (born December 29, 1959) is an American stand-up comedian.

Early life

Poundstone was born in Huntsville, Alabama, and her family moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts about a month after her birth. 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.

Career

Poundstone started doing stand-up comedy at open-mic nights in Boston in 1979. In the early 1980s Poundstone moved to San Francisco where she performed improvisational sets at The Other Cafe comedy club in the Haight-Ashbury. She characteristically performs dressed in a suit and tie. In 1984, Poundstone was cast in the movie Hyperspace but she did not further pursue an acting career. Instead, she continued 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, for which she won a CableACE Award"?making her the first female to win the ACE for best Standup Comedy Special. She worked as a political correspondent for The Tonight Show during the 1992 US Presidential campaign and did field pieces for The Rosie O'Donnell Show in 1996. In 1993, Poundstone won a second CableACE Award, and began writing the column, "Hey, Paula!" for Mother Jones (1993"1998). Poundstone featured in her own variety show, The Paula Poundstone Show, on ABC (which lasted two episodes). She also appeared on Hollywood Squares and was a regular panelist for the remake of To Tell the Truth and NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

Poundstone has also worked as a voice actress. She voiced Judge Stone on Science Court (also known as Squigglevision), an edutainment cartoon series done in the Squigglevision style that aired on Saturday mornings on ABC Kids in 1997. Staying with the makers of Science Court, Tom Snyder Productions, she was the voice of the mom, Paula Small, in the cartoon series Home Movies for the show's first five episodes, which aired on UPN. Between the show's 1999 UPN cancellation and 2000 revival on Cartoon Network, Poundstone chose to leave the show. The show's character, Paula Small, was named and loosely modeled around Poundstone.

Poundstone is #88 on Comedy Central's 2004 list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time, and #7 on Maxim magazine's list of "Worst Comedians of All Time". In November 2012, Poundstone was honored, along with Nina Totenberg, NPR correspondent; David Brooks, New York Times columnist; and Bob Mankoff, New Yorker Cartoon Editor, with the 2012 Moment Magazine Creativity Award at their 35th anniversary symposium, followed by a panel discussion on the intersection of humor and politics. In 2010 she was inducted into the Comedy Hall of Fame. Her second HBO standup special, Paula Poundstone Goes To Harvard, taped on campus at Saunders Hall, was the first time the institution ever allowed its name to be used in conjunction with a television show.

Poundstone had her own Bravo special as part of their three-part Funny Girls series, along with Caroline Rhea and Joan Rivers, titled Look What the Cat Dragged In.

Around the same time as her Bravo special, Poundstone released her first book, 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. In 2007 Poundstone became the National Spokesperson for United for Libraries, a grass roots division of the American Library Association that work to support their local libraries.

Poundstone tours the country and is a regular panelist on the Peabody Award winning weekly news quiz show, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on National Public Radio. In 2011, she was a panelist on a BBC America year end special of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and in April, 2013 she was on the panel when the show did its first Cinecast and was seen in movie theatres nationally. Poundstone has also appeared on A Prairie Home Companion, appearing in Los Angeles shows and at joke shows.

Poundstone released her first comedy CD, I HEART JOKES: Paula Tells Them in Maine, in 2009. Her newest CD, I HEART JOKES: Paula Tells Them in Boston was recorded during a performance at the Wilbur Theatre in the heart of the city and was released on April Fool's Day 2013.

Personal life

Poundstone began serving as a foster parent in the 1990s, eventually adopting two daughters and a son.

Poundstone publicly identified as asexual in an interview with the Dallas Voice in June 2007, stating "I'm totally an asexual human being. I haven't dated anyone". In her memoirs she wrote,

</ref> }} Poundstone frequently refers to cats in her comedy and on her website. She shares her home with 16 cats and supports Alley Cat Allies, a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to transforming communities to protect and improve the lives of cats.

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, which were later dropped. She was charged as a result of an incident in which she was driving her children while intoxicated. She pleaded "no contest" to felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor charge of inflicting injury on a child. 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.