Watching some daytime teevee this afternoon–what else you gonna do in sick bay?–and I have to ask: what’s not to love about Ellen. She’s cute and funny and generous and charitable and has stood up to vicious attacks with grace (remember when Jerry Falwell referred to her as “Ellen Degenerate”?).
And watching her dance is to feel her joy.
Five fun facts about Ellen:
1. She turned down a role in Friends before starring in Ellen.
2. Before she got her start in comedy, Ellen worked as a vacuum cleaner saleswoman, TGIFriday’s waitress and an oyster shucker in New Orleans.
3. There is a ride featuring Ellen DeGeneres at Walt Disney World’s Epcot park – Ellen’s Energy World.
4. Oprah Winfrey played Ellen DeGeneres’ therapist on the 1997 “coming out” episode of Ellen. DeGeneres’ friends Laura Dern, Demi Moore, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang and Billy Bob Thornton also made cameos.
5. Ellen DeGeneres used to love Hot Sox – tall, glittery socks popular in the early ’70s. But after moving to small-town Atlanta, Texas, she decided to give them away: “I’m going to a place where they have gun racks on the back of the pickup trucks…I just have to get rid of anything weird,” she told The New York Times in 2001.
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