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Allison Tolman Poster

Allison Tolman

Biography

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Jump to: Overview (3)  | Mini Bio (1)  | Family (1)  | Trivia (1)  | Personal Quotes (13)

Overview (3)

Born in Houston, Texas, USA
Birth NameAllison Cara Tolman
Height 5' 6" (1.68 m)

Mini Bio (1)

Born in Sugar Land, Texas, Allison Tolman earned a BFA in theatrical performance from Baylor University. After graduation, she moved to Dallas where she helped found and foster the independent ensemble based non-profit Second Thought Theatre while also learning that the whole being an adult thing is like, super hard. In 2009, she was accepted into Second City's Conservatory Training Program and later went on to write and perform sketch and satire with several groups throughout Chicago, most notably the monthly comedy podcast The City Life Supplement.

Throughout her career, Tolman has played a veterinary receptionist, personal assistant, children's theatre teacher, vocal coach, phone sales associate, client services representative, and dog walker - never on film, but in her actual life in order to pay her rent and be able to afford more tank tops from Target than any human actually needs.

(2014) Tolman lives in Chicago with a portly cat named Annie who enjoys staring at her blankly whenever there is a house centipede in the kitchen.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Allison Tolman

Family (1)

Parents Davis Nichols Tolman
Valerie Tolman (Clohecy)

Trivia (1)

Born on the same date as Nasim Pedrad.

Personal Quotes (13)

Improv training allows you to get out of your head a little bit and take more risks, which is something I would like to continue to improve upon.
Body-shaming is something I feel really strongly about. I think about my niece, I think about my friends who have daughters being on the Internet and reading these things, and it just makes me furious. It makes me so angry.
I went to New York for the first time when I was in college for a school trip and, uh, it did not appeal to me. It was too much hustle and bustle.
I did a lot of commercial and theater work when I got out of school and was living in Dallas, and I moved to Chicago to go through the Second City Conservatory Program.
At 32, I kind of thought I was past the point where I was gonna get a break that really changed my life overnight.
The thing about theater that always and still kind of makes me edgy is that you work and work and work and work, and then you're just in performance mode, and then you have to just be on; the work is done, and then you just have to do it over and over again, so you're just constantly at that performance level.
When I first got out of school, I went on a children's theater tour, and I went around the country a little bit that fall, and it was the first time I went to Chicago. We spend a couple of days in Chicago, and I was really struck viscerally by the city.
My mother has stories of leaving me in the bath as small kid, like a 3-year-old, and there being mirrors on the side, and her going to get a towel and coming back in, and me making faces at myself, like, 'Now I'm happy. Now I'm sad.'
I liked in television that you do some work, then you perform, then you stop and you have a break because they have to set up lights, and then you do some more work. I really liked the pace of it; it really agreed with me.
I've done some version of that Minnesota accent - that Midwestern accent - in sketch comedy for years. It's the quickest way to symbolize you're a mom.
It was important for me as a theater artist to allow myself and my interests to evolve over time and allow my notion of what success meant to evolve over time. I've always had a day job and never been just acting. But it didn't make me feel like I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.
I worked for three years in a small IT firm in Chicago. I managed our client base, so I translated into human speak for our technicians. But our company was sold, and the atmosphere and the culture really changed, so I quit without having anything else lined up.
I moved to Chicago and I did theater, and then I started writing and I stop acting and I did sketch. You know, I did all of the things that, if you were serious about doing television, don't do.

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