'I'm originally from Massachusetts and I moved to New York City in 2000 to go to Columbia. That’s where I met my best friend and comedy partner, Gabe Liedman, who plays Joey in our new movie, Obvious Child. I always wanted to be an actress and grew up idolizing Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Rosalind Russell, Judy Garland, and Maria from Sesame Street. My parents didn’t have cable, which was such a bummer at the time. We watched a lot of old stuff rented from the library, which now I’m really grateful for and I genuinely enjoyed. But I also really wanted to watch Rugrats.

After graduating I didn’t know how to get into acting at all and I was not interested in moving to LA, so I started to do stand-up because I felt like, 'Well, I’ll just get up on stage and I’ll just start talking. Easy.' I did it with Gabe as a duo and we sort of came up in a really cool group with people like Aziz Ansari, Nick Kroll, and Chelsea Peretti. Somebody from SNL saw my show at the Upright Citizens Brigade and the next week I was auditioning for the show. I spent a year on SNL and then I made a couple of movies, I did the Kroll Show, and I was on Girls.

What's fun about playing characters like Liz on the Kroll Show is that that sort of overdone look is so unnatural to me. You see these women on reality shows with so much stuff on their faces, and their hair glued to the shape of their curling iron, and that, to me, is so funny! In real life I like a natural look. Except for if I picked at something on my face and am trying to cover it up, I don’t wear foundation. What I want out of my daily routine is to feel clean and pretty and that I’m doing something that is exciting. I like a fruity lip—raspberry. I use a liner from MAC called Magenta to fill my whole lip in and then just put some of that Rosebud Salve over it. That’s nice for day. But the first lipstick that I ever had was MAC Pervette—my grandmother bought it for me. It was a heavily frosted pink, which went with this eyeliner—I got a lesson from the MAC lady at the Bloomingdale's in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

For skin I love coconut oil. I take my makeup off with it and I'll put it in my hair as a mask once a week, too. And I use Laura Mercier skin products. The Face Polish and the moisturizers are really great—they’re gentle and they smell good. I take a hair, skin, and nail vitamin called Maxi Plus because I got a terrible haircut about a year ago and I’ve been trying to grow it out ever since, so the MSM and biotin help. That's why I don’t get my eyebrows done—I’ll do them myself or pluck the stray hairs, but I like the shape I've always had. My grandfather had these eyebrows, so I'd like to keep them.”

—as told to ITG

Jenny Slate photographed by Emily Weiss in New York on June 19, 2014. Her new movie, Obvious Child , premieres nationwide Friday, June 27th.