Tina Fey Dishes to Vanity Fair About Her Facial Scar, Going From Frumpy to Fabulous

Tina Fey is undoubtedly a star. Many know her as the dead ringer for Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on “Saturday Night Live,” while others know her as the brilliant mind behind the NBC hit sitcom, “30 Rock,” and as "SNL’s" former “Weekend Update” star delivering zinger after zinger.

Fey sat down with Vanity Fair – the cover of which she is on, photographed by none other than Annie Leibovitz, of course – for an interview in which she talks about her meteoric trip from life at the Chicago improv, to “SNL” to “30 Rock,” and being Liz Lemon. She talks about when she and her musician-director husband, Jeff Richmond, first started dating — they fell in love quickly after a trip to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. The pair dated for seven years and have been married for another seven; they have a three-year-old daughter, Alice.

But she also talks about that faint scar that runs across her left cheek. You’ve never noticed it? Many people don’t.

So how did it happen?

A random, violent cutting attack by a stranger when Fey was only five years old.

“It was in, like, the front yard of her house, and somebody who just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen,” husband Richmond says. “That scar was fascinating to me … This is somebody who, no matter what it was, has gone through something. And I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life. When you have that kind of thing happen to you, that makes you scared of certain things, that makes you frightened of different things, your comedy comes out in a different kind of way, and it also makes you feel for people.”

But Fey rarely mentions the attack. She says she doesn’t think she grew up feeling less attractive because of it, and she was very confident as a kid. On “30 Rock,” Fey’s character, Lemon, favors her right side. You’re beautiful, Tina! (And Liz!)

“It’s really almost like I’m kind of able to forget about it, until I was on-camera, and it became a thing of ‘Oh, I guess we should use this side’ or whatever. Everybody’s got a better side.”

And of course, Fey talked about being the fake Sarah Palin — and the Alaska governor’s actual appearance on "SNL." Many liberal bloggers didn’t want the show to put the real Sarah Palin on, despite months of skewering John McCain’s running mate.

"The people on the left were like, ‘No, you can’t do that!’" Fey said. "And it’s like, ‘We don’t work for you.’"

Click here to read Vanity Fair’s entire interview with Fey and her husband.