Age, Biography, and Wiki
Carol Creighton Burnett was born on April 26, 1933, in San Antonio, Texas. Her family later moved to Hollywood, where she grew up near Hollywood Boulevard. She attended Hollywood High School and went on to study theater and musical comedy at UCLA. Burnett's early success came with her breakout performance on Broadway in 1959 in Once Upon a Mattress, for which she received a Tony Award nomination.
| Occupation | Stage Actress |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 26 April 1933 |
| Age | 92 Years |
| Birth Place | San Antonio, Texas, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Taurus |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Carol Burnett's physical measurements are not extensively detailed in public sources, but based on her career in theater and television, she is recognized for her energetic stage presence.
In 1964, Burnett starred in the Broadway musical Fade Out – Fade In but was forced to withdraw after sustaining a neck injury in a taxi accident. She returned to the show later but withdrew again to participate in a variety show, The Entertainers, opposite Caterina Valente and Bob Newhart. The producers of Fade Out – Fade In sued the actress for breach of contract after her absences from the popular show caused its failure, but the suit was later dropped. The Entertainers ran for only one season. Around the same time, Burnett became good friends with Jim Nabors, who was enjoying great success with his series Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. As a result of their close friendship, she played a recurring role on Nabors' show as a tough corporal and later as a gunnery sergeant (starting with the episode "Corporal Carol"). Later, Nabors would be the first guest on her variety show each season, as she considered him to be her good-luck charm.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Carol Burnett has been married three times: to Don Saroyan from 1963 to 1967, to Joe Hamilton from 1967 to 1984, and to Brian Miller from 2001 to the present. She has three daughters from her second marriage.
Her maternal grandparents were William Henry Creighton (1873–1918) and Mabel Eudora "Mae" Jones (1885–1967). Her parents divorced in the late 1930s. Subsequently, both parents independently moved to Hollywood and Burnett moved with her grandmother to a one-room apartment near her mother. They lived in an impoverished area of Hollywood, California, in a boarding house with Burnett's younger half-sister Chrissie.
When Burnett was in second grade, she briefly invented an imaginary twin sister named Karen, with Shirley Temple-like dimples. She later recalled that, motivated to further the pretense, she "fooled the other boarders in the rooming house where we lived by frantically switching clothes and dashing in and out of the house by the fire escape and the front door. Then I became exhausted and Karen mysteriously vanished." When Burnett was nine, she taught herself how to do the "Tarzan yell", which she realized years later was a good vocal exercise for volume, and it became a fan favorite. Burnett's first experiences with singing were with her family. Her grandmother was a trained musician who could play the piano (although they did not have one at the time), and her mother played the ukulele, so they sometimes sang popular songs in harmony together around the kitchen table. Her grandmother frequently took Burnett and her sister to the movies. They would take a few rolls of toilet paper home from the theater. The movies she saw in her youth influenced the sketch content in The Carol Burnett Show.
During this time, she performed in several university productions, garnering recognition for her comedic and musical abilities. Her mother disapproved of her acting ambitions:She wanted me to be a writer. She said you can always write, no matter what you look like. When I was growing up she told me to be a little lady, and a couple of times I got a whack for crossing my eyes or making funny faces. Of course, she never, I never, dreamed I would ever perform.
The young Burnett, always insecure about her looks, responded many years later to her mother's advice of "You can always write, no matter what you look like" by noting "God, that hurt!" in her memoir One More Time (1986).
During her junior year at UCLA in 1954, a professor invited Burnett and some other students to perform at a party in place of their class final that had been canceled (which required a performance in front of an audience). Afterwards, a man and his wife approached her while Burnett was stuffing cookies in her purse to take home to her grandmother. Instead of reprimanding her, the man complimented her performance and asked about her future plans. When he learned that she wanted to travel to New York in order to try her luck in musical comedy but could not afford the trip, he offered her and her boyfriend (Don Saroyan) each, on the spot, a $1,000 interest-free loan; the man, who was a millionaire from La Jolla, California, wasn't affiliated with show business and had earned his wealth from the shipbuilding industry. His conditions were simply that the loans were to be repaid within five years, his name was never to be revealed, and if she achieved success, she would help other aspiring talents to pursue their artistic dreams. Burnett took him up on his offer, and she and Saroyan left college and moved to New York to pursue acting careers. That same year, her father died of causes related to his alcoholism.
Burnett was cast in a minor role on The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show in 1955. She played the girlfriend of a ventriloquist's dummy on the popular children's program. This role led to her starring role opposite Buddy Hackett in the short-lived sitcom Stanley from 1956 to 1957. After Stanley, Burnett found herself unemployed for a short time. A few months later she bounced back, becoming highly popular as a performer on the New York circuit of cabarets and night clubs, most notably for a hit parody number called "I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles" (Dulles was Secretary of State at the time). In 1957, she performed this number on both The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. Dulles was asked about her on Meet the Press and joked, "I never discuss matters of the heart in public." Around this time she also worked as a regular on one of television's earliest game shows, Pantomime Quiz. On January 10, 1958, just as she was achieving her first small successes, her mother died. In October 1960, Burnett debuted at New York City's Blue Angel Supper Club, where she was discovered by scouts for The Jack Paar Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.
A true variety show, The Carol Burnett Show struck a chord with viewers. Among other subjects, it parodied films (Went with the Wind! for Gone with the Wind), television (As the Stomach Turns for the soap opera As the World Turns) and commercials. There were also frequent musical numbers. Burnett and her team struck gold with the original sketch "The Family", which eventually was spun off into the television show Mama's Family, starring Vicki Lawrence. She opened most shows with an impromptu question-and-answer session with the audience, lasting a few minutes, during which she often demonstrated her ability to humorously ad lib. On numerous occasions, she obliged when asked to perform her trademark Tarzan yell. She ended each show by tugging on her left ear, which was a message to her grandmother. This was done to let her know that she was doing well and that she loved her. During the show's run, her grandmother died. On an Intimate Portrait episode about Burnett, she tearfully recalled her grandmother's last moments: "She said to my husband Joe from her hospital bed 'Joe, you see that spider up there?' There was no spider, but Joe said he did anyhow. She said 'Every few minutes a big spider jumps on that little spider and they go at it like rabbits!!' And then she died. There's laughter in everything!" Burnett continued the tradition of tugging her ear. The show ceased production in 1978. Four post-script episodes were produced and aired on ABC during the summer of 1979 under the title Carol Burnett & Company. The productions used essentially the same format and, with the exception of Harvey Korman and Lyle Waggoner, the same supporting cast. Beginning in 1977, the comedy sketches of her series were edited into half-hour episodes for syndication entitled Carol Burnett and Friends, which for many years proved to be extremely popular in syndication. In the digital age, the series began airing on MeTV in January 2015. Burnett starred in a few films while her variety show was running, including Pete 'n' Tillie (1972) and The Front Page (1974). She was nominated for an Emmy in 1974 for her role in the drama 6 Rms Riv Vu. The show's enduring popularity surprised many when a 2001 retrospective containing outtakes and discussions with the cast, and a tribute to Bob Mackie, who designed all of the costumes that appeared on the show and enhanced outfits with comedic touches, drew in 30 million viewers, topping the Emmy Awards as well as all but the final game of that year's World Series. Her Grammy-winning memoir In Such Good Company is about the show, and Burnett tells about how it was developed, with anecdotes about improvisations, the cast, crew, and guests.
In the 1980s and 1990s, she made several attempts at starting a new variety program. She also appeared briefly on The Carol Burnett Show's "The Family" sketches' spinoff, Mama's Family, as her stormy character, Eunice Higgins. She played the matriarch in the cult comedy miniseries Fresno, which parodied the primetime soap opera Falcon Crest. In 1987 she starred in a variety sketch special, Carol, Carl, Whoopi and Robin alongside Carl Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, and Robin Williams. That same year she starred in the TV movie Plaza Suite with Dabney Coleman and Hal Holbrook. She reunited with Julie Andrews in the ABC special Julie & Carol: Together Again which they performed at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. She returned to television with the comedy series Carol & Company from 1990 to 1991. She guest starred as herself in The Larry Sanders Show in 1992 and in the sitcom Mad About You, playing Theresa Stemple, the mother of main character Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt), for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Burnett's first voice role was in The Trumpet of the Swan in 2001. In 2008, she had her second role as an animated character in the film Horton Hears a Who! In 2012, she had another voice role as the character Hara in the US Disney-dubbed version of The Secret World of Arrietty. In 2019, she voiced a talking chair, named Chairol Burnett, in Toy Story 4. Burnett similarly returned to film in 2005 to star in a different role as Queen Aggravain in the movie version of Once Upon a Mattress. She guest-starred in season two episodes of Desperate Housewives as Bree's stepmother, Elanor Mason. In 2009, she made a guest appearance on the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, for which she was nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series. In November 2010, she guest-starred on an episode of Glee as the mother of cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester. In 2014, Burnett joined two-time Tony Award Winner, Brian Dennehy, on Broadway in A. R. Gurney's Love Letters. She appeared on the reboot of Hawaii Five-0 as Steve McGarrett's Aunt Debbie. Her appearances, traditionally on Thanksgiving-themed episodes, were featured from 2013 until the character died of cancer in the January 15, 2016, episode.
On May 4, 1963, Burnett married television producer Joe Hamilton, a divorced father of eight and brother of actress Kipp Hamilton who had produced her 1962 Carnegie Hall concert. He later produced The Carol Burnett Show, among other projects. The couple had three daughters:
Burnett and Hamilton's marriage ended in divorce in 1984. The challenge of coping with Carrie's drug problems was mentioned as part of the reason for the separation, but the couple took the opportunity to inform other parents about handling such problems and raised money for the clinic in which Carrie was treated. In 1988, Burnett and Carrie took a trip to Moscow to help introduce the first Alcoholics Anonymous branch in the Soviet Union. Joe Hamilton died of cancer in 1991. Also in the 1980s, Burnett participated in a publicity campaign for MedicAlert, of which she is symbolically the one millionth member with the one millionth bracelet.
In August 2020, Burnett and her husband petitioned for guardianship of Burnett's teenage grandson. Burnett was already "educational rights holder", holding the legal right to make decisions about her grandson Dylan's schooling. Burnett and Miller subsequently held temporary guardianship of the child from September 2020 to November 2021, at which point Dylan's case worker assumed the role.
Memoirs Burnett and her oldest daughter, Carrie Hamilton, co-wrote Hollywood Arms (2002), a play based on Burnett's bestselling memoir, One More Time (1986). The show was developed at the 1998 Sundance Theatre Lab and The Goodman Theatre before arriving on Broadway, directed by Harold Prince. Sara Niemietz and Donna Lynne Champlin shared the role of Helen (the character based on Burnett), while Michele Pawk played Louise, Helen's mother, and Linda Lavin played Helen's grandmother. For her performance, Pawk received the 2003 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play. The show received a staging at New York's Merkin Concert Hall in 2015.
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| Husband | Don Saroyan (m. 1955-1962) Joe Hamilton (m. 1963-1984) Brian Miller (m. 2001) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Carol Burnett's net worth is estimated to be approximately $45 million. Her earnings primarily stem from her successful television shows, book deals, and various other ventures in writing and theater.
On April 26, 2023, Burnett was honored for her music, film, television, and theater roles by her friends and fellow actors and singers on her 90th birthday in the NBC special Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love, which was filmed at the Avalon Hollywood Theatre. Numerous stars came out to pay tribute to Burnett including Julie Andrews, Cher, Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Tomlin, Amy Poehler, and Kristin Wiig. The special won the Emmy for Outstanding Variety Special (pre-recorded) at the 75th Creative Emmy Arts Emmy Awards. As an executive producer of the special, Burnett accepted the Emmy on behalf of the special's team. Burnett also presented the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series to Quinta Brunson for Abbott Elementary at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards. Upon accepting the Emmy from Burnett, Brunson started to choke up saying, "I don’t even know why I’m so emotional. I think, like, the Carol Burnett of it all".
Career, Business, and Investments
- Early Career: Burnett's career began with performances in New York City nightclubs and her Broadway debut in Once Upon a Mattress. She gained recognition with her appearances on The Garry Moore Show, winning her first Emmy Award in 1962.
- The Carol Burnett Show: From 1967 to 1978, Burnett hosted The Carol Burnett Show, a groundbreaking variety and sketch comedy series that made her the first woman to host such a program. The show was renowned for its blend of comedy sketches, parodies, and musical numbers, earning numerous awards.
- Other Ventures: Burnett has also been involved in writing, theater, and film, contributing to her net worth through diverse revenue streams.
Burnett's film roles include Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), The Front Page (1974), A Wedding (1978), The Four Seasons (1981), Annie (1982), Noises Off (1992), and Horton Hears a Who! (2008). On television, she won an Emmy Award for her guest role in Mad About You and appeared in multiple specials with Julie Andrews. She was Tony-nominated for her role in Moon Over Buffalo (1995). Recently she has acted in Better Call Saul (2022), Palm Royale (2024), and Hacks (2025). She recorded her memoir In Such Good Company (2016) for which she won a Grammy Award.
In 2019, the Golden Globes created the Carol Burnett Award for career achievement in television, giving Burnett the first award. She was honored with an NBC special Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love celebrating her 90th birthday.
Burnett's first true taste of success came with her appearance on Broadway in the 1959 musical Once Upon a Mattress, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award; in the same year, she paid back her mysterious benefactor "to the day" after agreeing to her non-obligatory unsecured loan of $1,000. The same year, she became a regular player on The Garry Moore Show, a job that lasted until 1962. She won an Emmy Award that year for her "Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series" on the show. She portrayed a number of characters, most memorably the put-upon cleaning woman. The character later became her signature alter-ego. With her success on the Moore Show, Burnett finally rose to headliner status and appeared in the special Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall (1962), co-starring with her friend Julie Andrews. The show was produced by Bob Banner, directed by Joe Hamilton and written by Mike Nichols and Ken Welch. Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Program Achievement in the Field of Music, and Burnett won an Emmy for her performance. She also guest-starred on a number of shows during this time, including The Twilight Zone episode "Cavender Is Coming". In July 1963 Burnett starred as Calamity Jane in the Dallas State Fair Musicals production of Calamity Jane and had her television special debut in 1963 when CBS aired that production on November 12, 1963.
In 2019, the Golden Globes created an award in Burnett's name, the Carol Burnett Award, for career achievement in television. Burnett was also announced as the first recipient of the award. The Hollywood Foreign Press said in a statement, "For more than 50 years, comedy trailblazer Carol Burnett has been breaking barriers while making us laugh". Steve Carell presented the award to Burnett.
Burnett has written and recorded three memoirs, each voice recording receiving a nomination for Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album. In Such Good Company won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word at the 59th Grammy Awards.
In 2007, Burnett and Whacko, Inc. brought a suit against 20th Century Fox demanding at least $2 million in damages after an animated likeness of Burnett appeared in the 2006 episode "Peterotica" of the animated sitcom Family Guy. In the episode, the characters discuss the cleanliness of a porn shop, Glenn Quagmire stating that it is so clean because Burnett works there as a janitor. Burnett is then shown as her charwoman character mopping the floor, while a modified version of The Carol Burnett Show theme tune plays. The lawsuit alleged copyright infringement, violation of publicity rights and misappropriation of Burnett's name and likeness. In addition to damages, Burnett and her company demanded that Fox remove all references to her, the theme and the character. The studio refused. The court ruled in favor of the defendant because the bit was a parody, which is protected by the First Amendment, particularly by Fair Use doctrine.
Social Network
Carol Burnett maintains a strong legacy in the entertainment industry but is not particularly active on modern social media platforms.
Burnett spent her first year in New York working as a hat-check girl and trying to land acting jobs. She and other girls living at the Rehearsal Club (a boarding house for women seriously pursuing acting careers) put on The Rehearsal Club Revue on March 3, 1955. They mailed invitations to agents, who showed up along with stars like Celeste Holm and Marlene Dietrich. Such attendance opened doors for several of the girls.
After her show ended, she assumed a number of roles that departed from comedy. She appeared in several dramatic roles, most notably in the television movie Friendly Fire. She appeared as Beatrice O'Reilly in the film Life of The Party: The Story of Beatrice, a story about a woman fighting her alcoholism. Her other film work includes Robert Altman's comedy-drama A Wedding (1978), Alan Alda's romantic comedy The Four Seasons (1981), John Huston's musical film Annie (1982), and Peter Bogdanovich's comedy Noises Off (1992). She took the supporting role of Carlotta Campion in the 1985 concert performance of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. In 1995, after an absence of 30 years, she was back on Broadway in Moon Over Buffalo, for which she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. Four years later, she appeared in the Broadway revue Putting It Together.
In 2025, she played herself in the Max comedy series Hacks season four episode entitled, "I Love L.A.". In the episode Burnett offers some critical advice to Deborah (played by Jean Smart) who's overcome by a sudden bout of anxiety. Smart said of Burnett, "It was such a treat to have her. There's nobody like her in terms of comedy and just being an incredibly cool human being.... If I can be like her or Betty White when I'm in my 90s, I'll be a very, very happy lady."
Burnett has enjoyed close friendships with Lucille Ball, Beverly Sills, Jim Nabors (who became the godfather to her daughter Jody), Julie Andrews and Betty White. She is the acting mentor to Vicki Lawrence. They share a close friendship, as noted by Lawrence in a testimonial speech during her appearance at Burnett's 2013 Mark Twain Award in Washington, D.C. (recorded and broadcast on PBS Television).
Education
Carol Burnett attended Hollywood High School and later studied theater and musical comedy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
She attended Hollywood High School and eventually studied theater and musical comedy at UCLA. Later, she performed in nightclubs in New York City and had a breakout success on Broadway in 1959 in Once Upon a Mattress, for which she received a Tony Award nomination. She soon made her television debut, regularly appearing on The Garry Moore Show for the next three years, and won her first Emmy Award in 1962.
After graduating from Hollywood High School in 1951, Burnett received an anonymous envelope containing $50 for one year's tuition at UCLA, where she initially planned on studying journalism. During her first year of college, she switched her focus to theater arts and English, with the goal of becoming a playwright. She found she had to take an acting course to enter the playwright program. On the subject, she later reflected: "I wasn't really ready to do the acting thing, but I had no choice." During her first performance, she got a sudden impulse to speak her lines in a new way. "Don't ask me why, but when we were in front of the audience, I suddenly decided I was going to stretch out all my words and my first line came out 'I'm baaaaaaaack!'" The audience response moved her deeply:They laughed and it felt great. All of a sudden, after so much coldness and emptiness in my life, I knew the sensation of all that warmth wrapping around me. I had always been a quiet, shy, sad sort of girl and then everything changed for me. You spend the rest of your life hoping you'll hear a laugh that great again.
In keeping with her promise to the anonymous benefactor who assisted her in 1954, she has contributed to scholarship programs at UCLA and the University of Hawaii to help people in financial need.
