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Woman to Watch: Kristen Wiig

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Woman to Watch: Kristen Wiig

Kristen WiigWHY SHE'S ON OUR RADAR: Saturday Night Live's white-hot wiseacre cuts up as Ricky Gervais's inept doctor in the I-see-dead-people comedy Ghost Town. "I play his surgeon," says Wiig. "He dies and then comes back to life. It's pretty much my fault."

 

HER SHTICK: Dead-on impressions, like the excitable Target clerk and jacket-loving Suze Orman.

 

ALSO SEEN IN: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Semi-Pro, and Knocked Up.

 

FUNNY FACES: "Aunt Linda was inspired by a lady I saw on a plane who was confused by the in-flight movie," says Wiig, 35, of her daffy film-critic character on SNL. "She just kept saying, 'What's going on?' So I wrote a sketch about a woman who was watching The Matrix and kept asking, 'What are they doing? Why are they flying?'"

 

MONKEY BUSINESS: "It's the little things that aren't meant to be funny that make me laugh most, like bad fight scenes in old movies with dummies thrown around that we're supposed to think are people, or a gorilla that's clearly a man in a suit. I think every old TV show borrowed that same suit."

 

TINY DANCER: "I was always a closet performer," says Wiig. "If we had a babysitter, I'd sing and dance for her. I was also a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, but I broke character to wave to my mom."

 

HELL ON WHEELS: Up next, Wiig skates opposite Ellen Page in Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It!, about Roller Derby dolls. "I can definitely skate," she says. "I spent hours of my childhood at Overlook Roller Rink." --Thelma Adams


UNDER THE KNIFE: "I'd make a terrible surgeon. The fear of blood? Very high on my list."

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kate schweitzer

Kate

Kate Schweitzer is the senior web editor of Marie Claire. She loves traveling (even back to her hometown of St. Louis, Missouri), eating candy, cheating at Scrabble, and watching TV — so much so that she is a writer for Chaos Theory and Handsome Town, two web comedy series from Emmy-winning PhoebeTV.

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Koryn

Koryn Kennedy is Marie Claire's associate web editor. She believes in limited use of both personal pronouns and self-tanner, is a coffee snob and a Brooklyn boutique aficionado. Having grown up in Europe, she's never "from around here." Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sun Sentinel, Esquire.com, Premiere.com, and other movie and culture blogs.

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Abigail

Abigail Pesta is a journalist who has lived and worked around the world, from London to Hong Kong. (A highlight from her travels: bar-hopping in Shanghai with a minor-league Mafioso in his hearse-like limo.) She writes short-short stories for her website, Fine Words Butter No Parsnips.

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Jessica

Jessica Henderson is a senior editor. She obsesses daily over movies, television, celebrities, and music. A southern girl at heart and Brooklyn by address, her skill set also extends into vintage shopping, planning themed parties, brunching, applying eyeliner, dancing, concocting bourbon mint iced tea, movie-quoting, and Elvis spotting.

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