Paula Poundstone (born December 29, 1959 in
Huntsville, Alabama) is an American stand-up
comic. She is known for her quiet, self-deprecating style, political observations, and her
trademark suit and tie outfit.
Life
Poundstone's family moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts when she was young (some
sources incorrectly state Poundstone was born in Sudbury)[citation needed]. She adopted her first child, Thomas, in 1993. In 1997, she adopted two girls, Toshia and Allison. She has been a
foster mother to several children, but is now barred from providing foster care in the
aftermath of her arrest (the charges were later dropped) for three counts of a lewd act upon a child, a felony.
Career
Poundstone attended Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School,
eventually dropping 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-mike 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 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 and did the same for The Rosie O'Donnell Show in 1996.
In 1993, Poundstone won a second Cable Ace Award, began writing a regular column "Hey, Paula!" for Mother Jones magazine (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.
Poundstone also served as a panelist on the 2000 revival of the television game show
To Tell the Truth.
She was the original voice of Paula Small for the first five episodes of the cartoon series Home Movies, which aired on UPN, but left the show when it
moved to Cartoon Network and was replaced by Janine
Ditullo. The character's name and appearance were modeled after Poundstone. Also, she is currently a regular panelist on
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, a radio game show produced by
NPR. She is a regular guest on A Prairie Home
Companion, often appearing in shows in Los Angeles or at joke shows.
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".[1]
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 story. She took a number of years to write the work, since she does not use a
computer or know how to type, she wrote the entire book by hand in her spare time.
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.[2] Poundstone pled
guilty to charges of felony child endangerment and misdemeanor inflicting injury on a child. 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 pled 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.
"The lewd conduct charges against me were dropped because they weren't true," says Poundstone. "I pled no contest to the child
endangerment/injury charges because they were. My drinking helped to create a dangerous situation for the children. For this, I
am very sorry." [14 September 2001] 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 Poundstone's home as part of the foster care
system.[3][4]
References
External links
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