There aren’t many Massachusetts natives who will admit to disliking the Boston accent. But then again, Amy Poehler isn’t like most people, period. “It reminds me of my family and my childhood,” she wrote about the famed accent in her bestselling 2014 memoir, Yes Please. “But it’s one of the worst-sounding accents out there. I love Boston, but we sound like idiots.” Ouch. Talk about pulling no punches.
Another way the legendary comedienne is notably different from most: She refuses to participate in the time-honored Hollywood celebrity tradition of egomania. Between her work as Ambassador for the Worldwide Orphans Foundation, her campaign with Courtney Cox to end abuse and sexual assault, and her founding of Smart Girls—the online community dedicated to building young girls’ sense of self—you’d almost think the wildly successful star doesn’t have a career.
But she certainly does. In addition to earning two Primetime Emmy Award nominations on Saturday Night Live and starring in NBC’s Parks and Recreation, she’s also been nominated for three Emmys, two Golden Globe Awards, and one Screen Actors Guild Award. Her latest coup? A key role in Inside Out, the smash-hit animated kids’ film.
That piece of professional work encapsulates the generosity of spirit she exudes on a personal level. In the movie, which explores the mind of an 11-year-old girl and poses her emotions as separate characters in the story, Poehler plays Joy—the most mirthful of the bunch. And she says that’s helped her in real life, talking to her own boys, six-year-old Archie and four-year-old Abel. “To watch my sons figure out how they feel is complicated,” she has said in interviews, “because they don’t often know how to express it.”
As for her own self-expression, it’s an unalienable part of who she is. Known for regularly laughing at her own jokes offscreen, Poehler makes few excuses for finding happiness wherever she can. “I don’t break in scenes, but I do laugh too much,” she says. Once, while directing a film, a sound tech asked her to laugh less during the takes. “I was like, ‘I can’t promise you anything.’ I like to laugh a lot. I have a crazy maniacal laugh that I try to maintain through diet and exercise.”
She extends that unapologetic authenticity to her work with Smart Girls, which gives teen girls a place to “channel their intelligence, imagination, and curiosity into a drive to be their weird and wonderful selves.” It’s all in an effort, she says, to encourage “that kind of spirit and energy of being inclusive and unembarrassed by your joy, celebrating the ordinary curiosity of regular young people.”
Of course, we’re partial to believing that it’s really Poehler’s local roots that keep her so grounded. Born in Newton to high school teachers Eileen Frances and William Grinstead Poehler, she then moved to Burlington and graduated from Burlington High in 1989 before attending Boston College—where she caught the acting bug as a member of an improvisational acting group My Mother’s Fleabag and graduated with a degree in communications in 1993. From there it was on to Chicago, where she met her longtime friend and fellow comedienne Tina Fey. Since then, the two have done countless unforgettable skits, movies, shows, and hostings together.
OK, so maybe it isn’t just her Massachusetts upbringing that sets her apart. And likewise, it probably isn’t solely her love of honest laughter, self-expression, or girl power. It could very well be all of the above, plus the serendipity of improvisation that brings it all together and overcomes any impulse to hold back. As she puts it (unapologetically, of course), “No one looks stupid when they’re having fun.”