Melissa McCarthy

""Comedy to me is all about the bumps and bruises and weird tics," says McCarthy."It's everything you find out about somebody when you fall in love with them that on paper is really creepy but you find adorable. Like, Ben - maybe I shouldn't say this - he always thinks he's being poisoned. He's gotten better, but somebody put something in his drink in college and so now he's always paranoid. It's that kind of weirdness - not an eye patch and a mid-Atlantic accent - that makes you love a character." As for her own particular breed of percularity, Falcone says that his wife insists she has to jam her finger in his armpits or tap her fingernails hard on his front teeth before she falls asleep. "It's become a long argument where I'm just like,'You do not need that to go to sleep.' 'No, I really do. For me, that is important.'"
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Success, as ell as the grounding of age and family, has helped McCarthy shed some of her own anxiety over her appearance, So much so that last year when a blogger famously whined about the nauseating idea of watching Mike and Molly's overweight couple make out, McCarthy was flooded with disgust rather than insecurity. "My first thought was 'Gosh, I hope she doesn't have a daughter.' And thwn after a second I thought, 'What a sad, troubled person. You're making such a s---ty judgement on people.'"

"Do I sometimes hope I wake up in the morning and people are like, 'What's wrong with her? She looks emaciated,'" she says. "Of course I would love that. I'm such a clothes whore I would love the opportunity to be a hanger. But I think I'm more confident than I've ever felt in my life." She grimaces at herself for starting to cry again. "I'm so weird. This is crazy,sorry," she says, holding a napkin over her face. "Because I met with Judd Apatow this morning. He told me his idea for me and was like,'What do you think?' It's an awfully great, weird thing to have people that you're like, 'Oh, God, if I could just get a one-line part!' and then you're sitting with them and they're like, 'What do YOU think?"

She pauses to wipe her leaky eyes with the lapels of her jacket and allows herself a quick, happy shudder of disbelief. "Chance like this just always seem to happen to other people or to a different type," she says. She sits there mystified for a second before her face relaxes into the year's most winning smile. "I always thought it was worth the fight. Now I know it is."

-- Karen Valby, EW #1179, The Comedy Issue


The underrated Melissa McCarthy has finally made it into the big league. With the hilarious role in Bridesmaid that stole almost the whole show, and the Emmy win for her role in Mike and Molly, she has definitely come a long way. I've watched her for a better part of her 7 years on Gilmore Girls as the charmingly quirky Sookie, and always thought she deserved more credit for that colourful character which nicely complemented Lauren Graham's Lorelai. I'm glad now the whole world not only can see how funny she is, but also how down-to-earth and inspiring this woman can be.