I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half-empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.

— Janeane Garofalo

IF you keep spoon-feeding people shit, that's what they're going to ask you for," concludes actress and comedienne Janeane Garofalo. Clearly, this is one woman who will never be accused of reticence. In fact, her unbridled cynicism and outspoken attitude have invited the media to label her a spokeswoman for Generation X, a title Garofalo doesn't want (and doesn't even qualify for, really: well into her mid-thirties, she's a card-carrying 'tweener). Her penchant for candidly answering every question, be it about religion, sexism, selling out, or her next project, has proved to be both the blessing that drives her career forward and the curse that occasionally sets it back. She is just as blunt about her willingness to shelve her point of view for the sake of career advancement: "I am a sellout, I admit it. I will not pretend. I joined the other side, the wrong team. I am not proud of it. It was a calculated career move."

Born to Carmine and Joan Garofalo, Janeane had an average middle-class upbringing that didn't exactly inspire great ambition. As a child, Garofalo aimed her aspirations at her mom's secretarial position. A move from New Jersey to Houston her senior year of high school provided just the right amount of warping angst that seems necessary for performers: she gained weight (a continuing battle the 5'1" star speaks openly about), became a recluse, found solace in memorizing Cheech & Chong and Steve Martin bits, and religiously watched Letterman and SCTV. Attending college in Rhode Island was just as unpleasant as her high school experience, until her senior year, when she attended an open-mike night and caught the stand-up bug. Garofalo soon was crowned Funniest Person in Rhode Island, an honor which she insists, in her typical self-deprecating manner, was "a testament to the lack of talent among the other participants." She stuck to her resolve despite her mother's impassioned pleas that she enter Bloomingdale's management-training program, and committed herself to comedy.

Garofalo moved to Boston, where she whiled away several years supporting herself as a shoe salesperson, a bicycle messenger, a movie-theatre usher, and a chat-line moderator (the latter job didn't last long, because she refused to talk dirty). She spent her evenings at any microphone she could find, developing a brand of humor that she says is "a cross between spoken word and stand-up," but is now commonly referred to as alternative comedy. One evening, manager Jimmy Miller (brother of comedian Dennis Miller) handed her his card. Garofalo plucked up the courage to move to Los Angeles in 1989, but failed to impress the masses that flock to established comedy clubs like the Comedy Store and the Laugh Factory. Miller was less than enthused, but luckily Rick Messina, another big-shot agent, caught her act and saw her potential. Under his auspices, Garofalo became a staple on shows like The Dennis Miller Show and MTV's Half-Hour Comedy Hour.

Nineteen ninety-two was undoubtedly one of Garofalo's best years. After bumping into actor-writer-director Ben Stiller at a deli in Los Angeles, she was offered a part on his new Fox program, The Ben Stiller Show. While sitting in the makeup chair for the very first Stiller, Garry Shandling, who was making a guest appearance, offered her the role of Paula the talent booker on HBO's The Larry Sanders Show. Although Fox dumped The Ben Stiller Show prematurely, it went on to win an Emmy, which raised Garofalo's coolness cachet considerably. The Stiller connection also landed her a feature-film break: Stiller's 1994 Reality Bites gave Garofalo a chance to steal scenes from Winona Ryder and further entwined her, for better or for worse, with the marketing cliché of the moment, "Generation X." Her role in the film also introduced her to one of the more banal realities of Hollywood: "I was contractually forced to lose weight for Reality Bites, against my will," Garofalo says. "I lost 12 pounds; they wanted me to lose 26. I fought every step, because I thought it was important that I make my movie debut as a person with some heft—as a normal-looking person. I'm trying to be one of the few people in my job who don't make teenage girls feel bad about themselves."

Her film debut effort was almost overshadowed by her partial season as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. Before jumping aboard, Garofalo had given some interviews in which she criticized the show for not being funny, and characterized Adam Sandler's comedy as "childish." Sandler ripped into her on her first day, and then refused to speak with her for several weeks thereafter. The rest of the cast and crew were similarly put off by her sentiments and the media perception that she was a potential "savior" for the show. Before the season ended, Garofalo left the show in a swirl of publicity: "It turned out disastrously. That was the year the bad karma came to a head. I didn't have the self-esteem to make it through it, so I left." Garofalo believes she would have fared much better if she had debuted during the 1995 season, and wishes to this day that she had the job.

Thankfully, Garofalo had Larry Sanders to fall back on, as well as her first starring role, opposite Uma Thurman in The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Garofalo ran away with that movie and made it a certifiable middling hit ($34 million in box-office receipts), but the process was filled with angst. Garofalo says that studio executives, who viewed her as dour and unlikable, "weren't shy about letting me know they weren't happy." She wasn't allowed to improvise, and every scene was shot numerous times. At one point, Uma Thurman had to talk the executives out of firing Garofalo. But Garofalo garnered rave reviews, with many critics questioning only her believability as the "ugly girl" in this distaff version of the Cyrano de Bergerac tale.

In an effort to land more film roles, Garofalo shed 35 pounds and granted any number of interviews in which she demeaned herself for selling out. While the strategy helped her get auditions, she gained back all the weight, despite how much "more talented" weighing a trim 105 made her in the eyes of Hollywood dealmakers. Her roller-coaster weight and self-deprecation haven't put a hold on her career, judging from her recent film appearances. She co-starred alongside Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino in the airhead comedy Romy and Michele's High School Reunion; with Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro in the drama Cop Land; with longtime associate Stiller in the mordant Jerry Stahl biopic Permanent Midnight; and opposite Vince Vaughn (Swingers) in the noirish Clay Pigeons. Garofalo has also established a production company, appropriately titled I Hate Myself Productions. She once shared a special moment with one of her idols, David Letterman: "I was on the show and he said, 'Don't be so hard on yourself.' I said, 'If I don't have my self-loathing, what do I have?' He laughed and looked at me, and I knew he hated himself too."

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