There’s no doubt that 2008 was Tina Fey’s big year. She had a hit movie (Baby Mama), her show “30 Rock” finally started getting recognized as more than an underground cult favorite, and her impression of Sarah Palin garnered her old stomping ground, Saturday Night Live, its highest ratings in years. Tina is Vanity Fair’s cover girl for the January issue, and the self-proclaimed nerd is turning up the glamour in a leggy, pinup-inspired photo shoot. She also finally reveals how she got that trademark scar on her cheek. People have been asking her about it for years and she’s always refused to talk about it. In this interview, Tina’s husband, Jeff Richmond, spills the beans.

Liz Lemon favors her right side. That’s because a faint scar runs across Tina Fey’s left cheek, the result of a violent cutting attack by a stranger when Fey was five. Her husband says, “It was in, like, the front yard of her house, and somebody who just came up, and she just thought somebody marked her with a pen.”

You can hardly see the scar in person. But I agree with Richmond that it makes Fey more lovely, like a hint of Marlene Dietrich noir glamour in a Preston Sturges heroine.

“That scar was fascinating to me,” Richmond recalls. “This is somebody who, no matter what it was, has gone through something. And I think it really informs the way she thinks about her life. When you have that kind of thing happen to you, that makes you scared of certain things, that makes you frightened of different things, your comedy comes out in a different kind of way, and it also makes you feel for people.”

I wonder how the scar affected Fey in high school. “She wasn’t Rocky Dennis developing a sense of humor because of her looks, like in Mask,” says Damian Holbrook, laughing. Liz Lemon’s blustery Republican boss, Jack Donaghy, played with comic genius by Alec Baldwin, tells Lemon, “I don’t know what happened in your life that caused you to develop a sense of humor as a coping mechanism. Maybe it was some sort of brace or corrective boot you wore during childhood, but in any case I’m glad you’re on my team.”

The article also chronicles Tina’s early days as a writer on SNL, when she was a mousy, quiet person who “wore ski hats and ate junk food,” until finally she lost 30 pounds and got out from behind the writer’s desk to start performing on the show.

Her true vice is cupcakes. I’ve brought her a box, one frosted with the face of Sarah Palin. She chooses that one, which is bigger, joking that it’s O.K. if she gains weight before her Annie Leibovitz photo shoot in a few days, because “Annie’s going to photograph my soul, right?” When it comes to her looks, she’s both forgiving and self-deprecating. “The most I’ve changed pictures out of vanity was to edit around any shot where you can see my butt,” she says. “I like to look goofy, but I also don’t want to get canceled because of my big old butt.” Frowning and rubbing the lines between her eyes, she adds that she might also tell the 30 Rock postproduction team, “ ‘Can you digitally take this out?’ Because I don’t have Botox or anything.”

Fey’s friend Kay Cannon, a 30 Rock writer, says that Tina has remained self-deprecating even as she has glammed up. “She’ll always see herself as that other, the thing she came from.”

[From Vanity Fair]

I’ve been rooting for Tina since her days on SNL. She’s smart, funny and deserves all the success she has right now. In a world of Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians – people who are famous for essentially nothing- Tina Fey is someone you just can’t help but love. I am keeping my fingers crossed that Tina doesn’t eventually turn into a Mariah Carey type. I don’t think it’s possible, but you never know.