Carol Burnett

Carol Burnett Bio

Carol Creighton Burnett, born on April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas, is an American comedian, actress, singer, and writer whose career has spanned more than six decades. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in television comedy, known for her sharp characters, musical talent, and gift for improvisation. Burnett created and starred in The Carol Burnett Show from 1967 to 1978, becoming the first woman to host a comedy-variety series on television. Over the course of her career, she has received numerous major honors, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Kennedy Center Honor, while continuing to appear on stage and screen.

Beyond her variety show work, Burnett built a versatile résumé across film, theater, and dramatic television. Her performances in movies such as Annie (1982) and Noises Off (1992), as well as her guest appearances on series including Mad About You, Better Call Saul, Palm Royale, and Hacks, demonstrated her range as both a comedian and a dramatic actress. She has also written multiple memoirs and remains a celebrated cultural figure whose influence is felt across generations of performers.

Early Life and Background

Carol Creighton Burnett was born on April 26, 1933, at Nix Hospital in San Antonio, Texas, the daughter of Ina Louise Creighton, a publicity writer for movie studios, and Joseph Thomas Burnett, a movie theater manager. Her parents divorced in the late 1930s, after which both parents moved to Hollywood. Burnett moved with her grandmother to a one-room apartment in an impoverished section of Hollywood, California, where they lived in a boarding house with her younger half-sister Chrissie. She was named after actress Carole Lombard, a detail that would later feel fitting given her own career in film and television.

Burnett’s early life was shaped by music, movies, and imagination. Her grandmother was a trained pianist, and her mother played the ukulele, so the family often sang popular songs together around the kitchen table. Her grandmother frequently took Burnett and her sister to the movies, sometimes bringing along rolls of toilet paper from the theater. When Burnett was nine years old, she taught herself the famous Tarzan yell, a vocal exercise that would later become a beloved trademark of her performances.

During her teenage years, Burnett worked as an usherette at the Warner Brothers Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. After graduating from Hollywood High School in 1951, she received an anonymous envelope containing fifty dollars for one year’s tuition at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She initially planned to study journalism before switching her focus to theater arts and English with the goal of becoming a playwright. An acting course required for the program unexpectedly set her on the path toward performing.

Path to Celebrity

Burnett’s life changed during her junior year at UCLA in 1954, when she and some classmates were invited to perform at a party in place of a canceled class final. A wealthy stranger from La Jolla, California, who had no connection to show business, was so impressed that he offered Burnett and her boyfriend Don Saroyan each a one-thousand-dollar interest-free loan to travel to New York and pursue careers in musical comedy. The man asked only that the loan be repaid within five years, that his name never be revealed, and that she help other aspiring talents if she achieved success. That same year, her father died of causes related to his alcoholism.

Burnett and Saroyan left college and moved to New York, where she spent her first year working as a hat-check girl and auditioning for acting jobs. In 1955, she and other young women at the Rehearsal Club, a boarding house for aspiring actresses, put on The Rehearsal Club Revue and mailed invitations to agents and stars. The performance opened doors, and she soon landed small television roles, including a part on The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show and a starring role opposite Buddy Hackett in the short-lived sitcom Stanley from 1956 to 1957.

She became highly popular in the New York nightclub circuit, most notably for a parody number called I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles, which she performed on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. Her Broadway breakthrough came in 1959 with Once Upon a Mattress, earning a Tony Award nomination. She soon became a regular on The Garry Moore Show, where her portrayal of a put-upon cleaning woman became her signature alter ego and helped her rise to headliner status.

Carol Burnett Career

Early Career (1955–1966)

Carol Burnett’s earliest notable work came on television, where she appeared on The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show in 1955 and starred in the sitcom Stanley from 1956 to 1957. She gained fame through nightclub performances in New York and appearances on major variety programs, including The Ed Sullivan Show. Her breakout success arrived with the 1959 Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, which earned her a Tony Award nomination and helped establish her as a major comedic talent. She repaid the loan from her anonymous benefactor on the very day she achieved success, honoring the promise she had made years earlier.

From 1959 to 1962, Burnett was a regular on The Garry Moore Show, winning her first Emmy Award in 1962 for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series. She co-starred with Julie Andrews in the 1962 television special Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Music. In 1963, she made her feature film debut in the comedy Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?, and she later appeared in the variety show The Entertainers alongside Bob Newhart and Caterina Valente.

Breakthrough (1967–1978)

The defining chapter of Carol Burnett’s career began in 1967, when she exercised a clause in her CBS contract to launch her own variety show. The Carol Burnett Show ran for eleven seasons until 1978, eventually garnering twenty-three Emmy Awards and numerous Golden Globe honors. Burnett created many memorable characters during the show’s run, most memorably the put-upon charwoman and Eunice Harper Higgins, the latter of whom later appeared in the spinoff series Mama’s Family. The ensemble cast included Harvey Korman, Lyle Waggoner, and the teenaged Vicki Lawrence, whom Burnett discovered and mentored.

The show’s comedy sketches parodied films, television, and commercials, with standout numbers such as Went with the Wind, a spoof of Gone with the Wind. Burnett often opened each episode with an impromptu question-and-answer session with the audience, demonstrating her sharp improvisational skills, and she ended every show by tugging her left ear as a private message to her grandmother. She also became the first celebrity to appear on Sesame Street when she joined the children’s series for its premiere episode on November 10, 1969.

During this period, Burnett also appeared in films such as Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972) and The Front Page (1974), earning an Emmy nomination in 1974 for her dramatic role in 6 Rms Riv Vu. A 2001 retrospective special drew around thirty million viewers, surpassing that year’s Emmy Awards and nearly every game of the World Series, an indication of the lasting popularity of her work. She later wrote the Grammy-winning memoir In Such Good Company about the show and its creation.

Notable Works and Milestones

Beyond The Carol Burnett Show, Burnett’s signature screen work includes Robert Altman’s A Wedding (1978), Alan Alda’s The Four Seasons (1981), John Huston’s Annie (1982), and Peter Bogdanovich’s Noises Off (1992). She also voiced characters in animated films such as Horton Hears a Who! (2008) and Toy Story 4 (2019). Her dramatic television work earned her an Emmy Award for her guest role in Mad About You, and her performance as Marion in Better Call Saul drew critical praise. In 2024, at age 91, she became the oldest nominee for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role in Palm Royale.

Carol Burnett Award Nominations

Carol Burnett has accumulated one of the most decorated résumés in American entertainment, with nominations spanning virtually every major performance award. Over the course of her career she has received twenty-three Primetime Emmy Award nominations, eighteen Golden Globe Award nominations, three Tony Award nominations, and three Grammy Award nominations. Her Emmy nominations cover work on The Garry Moore Show, Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall, The Carol Burnett Show, Mad About You, Better Call Saul, and Palm Royale. She has also been nominated for her Broadway performances in Once Upon a Mattress and Moon Over Buffalo, and for her spoken-word recordings including In Such Good Company.

Carol Burnett Awards Won

Burnett’s long list of wins reflects her standing across television, music, and stage. She has won six Primetime Emmy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, one Grammy Award, and one Tony Award, along with twelve People’s Choice Awards and two Peabody Awards. Her honors include a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1975, a Kennedy Center Honor in 2003, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2013, and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2015. In 2019, the Golden Globes created the Carol Burnett Award for career achievement in television, naming her the first recipient.

Carol Burnett Family

Carol Burnett was married three times. She married her college sweetheart Don Saroyan on December 15, 1955, and they divorced in 1962. On May 4, 1963, she married television producer Joe Hamilton, a divorced father of eight and brother of actress Kipp Hamilton, who had produced her 1962 Carnegie Hall concert. The couple had three daughters, including Carrie Hamilton and Erin Hamilton. Her marriage to Hamilton ended in divorce in 1984, and he died of cancer in 1991. On November 24, 2001, Burnett married drummer Brian Miller, who is twenty-three years her junior.

Burnett has enjoyed close friendships with Lucille Ball, Beverly Sills, Jim Nabors, Julie Andrews, and Betty White. She has long mentored actress Vicki Lawrence, whom she discovered as a teenager and cast on The Carol Burnett Show. Following Carrie Hamilton’s struggles with drug addiction, Burnett became an advocate for awareness and fundraising efforts tied to treatment programs. In August 2020, Burnett and her husband Brian Miller petitioned for guardianship of her teenage grandson, holding temporary guardianship from September 2020 to November 2021.

Personal Life

Beyond her professional life, Carol Burnett has remained active in philanthropy, particularly in support of education and the arts. In keeping with her promise to the anonymous benefactor who helped her in 1954, she has contributed to scholarship programs at UCLA and the University of Hawaii. In November 2025, UCLA announced that Burnett had endowed a scholarship at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, supporting high-potential undergraduate students in the Ray Bolger Musical Theater Program, along with a donation of more than 140 industry awards to be displayed at the Freud Playhouse.

Burnett has also been a longtime supporter of Alcoholics Anonymous, traveling to Moscow in 1988 with her daughter Carrie to help introduce the organization’s first branch in the Soviet Union. She has authored three memoirs, including One More Time (1986) and In Such Good Company (2016), the latter of which won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. She co-wrote the 2002 Broadway play Hollywood Arms with Carrie Hamilton, based on her earlier memoir and directed by Harold Prince.