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Margaret Cho (born 1968)
Making her stand-up debut at 16 in a local comedy club, Margaret soon won a spot opening for Jerry Seinfeld and in her early twenties moved to Los Angeles, temporarily living with a small group of performers before heading out on her own to play the college circuit. Touring college campuses, Margaret soon became the most popular act on the circuit and was named Campus Comedian of the Year. Her big break came with a guest spot on The Arsenio Hall Show, and in 1994 she won the American Comedy Award for Best Female Comedian. Margaret Cho was now a national celebrity, bolstered by instantly classic material such as her impression of her mother's reaction to a porn magazine titled "Ass-Master," one of the many adult gay items her parents sold in their store. Margaret's new national celebrity was rewarded with her own television sitcom, All-American Girl, starring Margaret as a young woman whose attempts to assert her own independence as a liberated Asian-American woman often clashed with the attitudes and concerns of her more traditional minded family. The experience quickly turned into a nightmare. Network executives continually meddled with the show, complaining that the show and characters were "too Asian" to appeal to general audiences, while critics within the Asian community complained that the show and characters were not Asian enough. Towards the end, all but one of the actors playing Margaret's family, including accomplished actor B.D. Wong, were let go. By then, extreme stress had resulted in notable weight gain on Margaret's part, and this in turn caused network executives to order her into crash diets and fad weight-loss programs which damaged her health. By the time All-American Girl was canceled after only one season, Margaret was suffering from nervous exhaustion and depression which soon presented themselves in the forms of alcoholism, eating disorders, and sex addiction. Margaret would later describe these experiences in her autobiography, I'm the One That I Want, and now notes that bad as the experiences may have been, they did play an important part in her finding herself as both a person and a comedian. Quickly recovering from the All-American Girl debacle, Margaret returned to the college and comedy club circuits, and began appearing in films like It's My Party and John Woo's Face-Off. She also performed in an Off-Broadway adaptation of I'm The One That I Want, and a filmed version, produced and distributed by Margaret herself, became the most successful indie film for 2000. That same year she received the first Golden Gate Award from GLAAD and was featured in Kweisi Mfume's Remarkable Journey, a documentary on accomplishments by people of color. An installment of E! Celebrity Profiles featuring Margaret received the Gracie Allen Award from the American Women in Radio and Television Organization. If anything, Margaret has emerged from her earlier experiences a stronger and more assertive person, and is even more outspoken about her support of gays and transgendered persons, her own Asian identity, and the still very rampant sexism and racism which exists in the entertainment industry and society as a whole. She has also acknowledged her own bisexuality, though she still usually refers to herself as simply a fag hag and a "slut." In typical Margaret fashion, the latter observations are not acts of self-deprecation but assertively proud proclamations. Most recently, Margaret Cho has completed a sold-out performance of her latest show, Notorious C.H.O., at Carnegie Hall, and finished filming a performance of the show in Seattle for release late in 2002. The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund has given her its Lambda Liberty Award for 2002, and a Media Award has been granted to her by the National Organization for Women. In 2003, she did a temporary stint as an advice columnist, "The Ask Master," on Gay.com. Links: Margaret Cho: High Priestess of the Underrepresented
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