What brought me to L.A. was work! I moved to Chicago after college - I went to Kalamazoo - did my nerd thing, graduated, and moved to Chicago to pursue improv.
After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.
I grew up in the inner city of Chicago, and then I moved to Robbins, and it kind of raised me. When I was in college, I actually had them change the starting lineup to say 'from Robbins, Illinois' instead of 'Chicago, Illinois.'
In 1980, I moved to Chicago, and I recorded demo tapes for my friends' bands, and in 1981, the first Big Black record - the first thing I did that was an actual record.
I grew up in Glen Ellyn, which is about 20 miles west of Chicago. I attended Glenbard South High School and University of Illinois. I didn't study acting until I moved to Los Angeles after college, but the fact that I was raised in the Chicago area set the stage for all of my comedic and acting sensibilities.
I joined an improv group in college, which was a lot of fun. After I graduated, I moved to Chicago to try to get into the Second City.
I moved to Chicago and began attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The students and teachers I met in Chicago were politically active and also passionate about the same things that I was interested in. It was a great match for me.
After my 12th, my parents moved to Bangalore while I moved to Mumbai to study Economics at Sophia College. Much unlike other girls who managed to evade the curfew and organised the slips to get out of college, we would attend college and were interested in academics.
I was in my early twenties. I was 22-ish. I graduated from college and went right into teaching. The first year, I taught in Indiana at a couple schools, and then I moved over to Chicago.
Everybody had to go to some college or other. A business college, a junior college, a state college, a secretarial college, an Ivy League college, a pig farmer's college. The book first, then the work.
One of the great things going on in Chicago is the educational facilities here. And the largest film school in the world is right here in Chicago: Columbia College.
I left Detroit in 2007, worked on a cruise ship for a year, moved to Chicago in '08, then moved to L.A. in February 2012.
After being away at college and in the Army, I never considered living anywhere else. I loved Chicago then, and I love Chicago now.
I left home to go to college, and then I moved back home. I moved back for three years from 21 to 24.