Kathy Griffin - Early Life

Early Life

Kathleen Mary Griffin was born in Oak Park, Illinois on November 4, 1960. Her mother, Mary Margaret "Maggie" (née Corbally), and her father, John Patrick Griffin, were first-generation Irish Americans. Maggie worked as a cashier in the Oak Park Hospital. The last of five children, her siblings are Kenny, Joyce, Gary, and John. Griffin described herself during her early years as "a kid who needed to talk, all the time". She would often visit her neighbors, the Bowens, to tell them stories about her family; she has referred to these visits as her first live shows and the place where she learned "the power of juicy material". When most of her siblings moved, Griffin often spent hours alone in the house, and she developed a binge eating disorder. She explained that even though eating disorders were not very well known at that time, she knew that her eating behavior was aberrant and always threw the garbage away in the neighbor's can. In her 2009 autobiography Official Book Club Selection, Griffin confessed that she "still suffers " but has learned to "deal with them". In the same book, Griffin discussed her eldest brother Kenny, who was a drug addict and homeless at various times, and revealed that she was 'afraid of him until the moment he died' due to his violent abusive nature. Griffin states that Kenny would climb into bed with her when he was 30 and she was 7 and 'whisper' into her ears; Kathy refused to speak to him or be in the same room as him for years, but didn't tell her parents until she was in her 20s, at which point he openly admitted pedophilia to their parents.

As a young girl Griffin attended St. Bernadine's Elementary School, and began to develop a dislike for organized religion due to the punishments of the nuns towards her and other "vulnerable" students. After graduation, she attended Oak Park and River Forest High School and sought refuge in musical theatre, playing roles such as Rosemary in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof. During her senior year she began arguing with her parents, who wanted her to attend college, because she wanted to become a professional actress. Her first appearance on television was as an extra on a Chicago White Sox commercial, and she was signed with different Chicago talent agencies. At age eighteen, Griffin convinced her parents to move to Los Angeles to help her become famous.

At age nineteen, Griffin attended a show of the California-based improvisational group The Groundlings. She said, "I thought. This is where I want to be. This is the greatest thing in the world." After the show ended, she went backstage and asked member Phil Hartman about it.