Freethought of the Day

Sarah Silverman

On this date in 1970, Sarah Kate Silverman was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, into a secular Jewish home. Silverman acted in plays as a teen and first performed stand-up comedy at age 17. She attended New York University for a year and dropped out to work in New York City comedy clubs. Silverman worked as a writer and featured player on "Saturday Night Live" for the 1993-94 season when she was only 21. She was featured on “Mr. Show,” a sketch comedy show on HBO, from 1995-97.

Silverman appeared in films such as “There’s Something About Mary” (1998), “Heartbreakers” (2001), “The School of Rock” (2003), “Rent” (2005) and “The Muppets” (2011). Her film based on her stand-up, “Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic,” got positive reviews in 2005. “The Sarah Silverman Program” aired on Comedy Central between 2007 and 2010 and was one of the network’s highest rated shows.

Silverman was nominated for an Emmy for her acting on the show in 2009. She won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics in 2008 for the short video she also starred in called “I’m Fucking Matt Damon,” which first aired on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” (She and Kimmel were in a relationship from 2002-08.) Her memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption and Pee (2010), was a New York Times best-seller.

In a comic video first seen on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Silverman suggests to the pope: “Sell the Vatican, take a big chunk of that money, build a gorgeous condominium for you and all of your friends to live in, all the amenities, swimming pool, tennis court, water slide. And with the money left over, feed the whole fucking world. You preach to live humbly, and I totally agree. So now maybe it's time for you to move out of your house that is a city.”

In an interview on “CNN Larry King Live,” King asked her if she was agnostic, to which she replied, “Yes, I'm agnostic. I don't know. I just don't know. I think people need religion because they need to know. They need to get their head around it. But you know, I don't know. I don't know what the answers are.” (April 20, 2010)

PHOTO: Silverman at the 2007 Tribeca Film festival. Joan Garvin public domain photo.

"I just think of myself as a comedian, really. I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It’s funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I’m not religious at all. I have no religion."

—Silverman in an interview with Slate online (Nov. 10, 2005)

Compiled by Bonnie Gutsch

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