Liz Torres may have risen to fame as a comedian, but it soon became clear that she had talent beyond just telling jokes. With that in mind, it’s hardly a surprise that the New York native turned to cinema and music, becoming a class act in the process.
Today, Torres is widely known for her performance as Miss Patty on Gilmore Girls. In the last number of years, the actress has undergone a massive transformation that has seen her drop massively in weight.
This is all you need to know about Liz Torres – and what she looks like after her weight loss.
Liz Torres was born on September 27, 1947. She grew up in the Bronx, New York City, and before she found her love for show business, her mother wanted her to take her life in a whole different direction.
According to Liz, it was the worst advice she had ever been given.
“‘Be a bank teller,’” Torres recalled her mother instructing her in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. “She had a fantasy of me working in a bank. That was her immigrant dream, the ultimate goal.”
“People who knew me in high school thought I was: A strange bird. I didn’t speak English very well, and my mother was very strict,” the Puerto Rican-American added. “I always wanted to be like an American, and I never really felt like that until now, I always felt like an immigrant.”
Liz went through primary and secondary school in New York City. As she moved on into high school, her interests and dreams for the future started to form. She began to love drama classes, and performed in several productions in high school. Through this, her love for show business was born.
Initially, she wanted to become a dancer, but early arthritis prevented her from dancing to make a living.
Upon graduating, Torres got straight to work. She had become very interested in acting, though, and was talented in music as well. So Torres went to Manhattan School of Music, though she dropped out to attend NYU instead.
There, comedy became more than just an interest of hers. It was now something she wanted to do for a living.
“I was very serious about anything until an old Vaudeville-styled comic named Phil Foster, who was on the Tonight Show all the time, ran into me at a party. He said, ‘You’re very funny. You should do standup!’ I thought he was nuts. I said, ‘No, my English is not strong.’ He said, “You’re very funny. I’ll teach you how to write,” Torres recalled.
“So, he taught me how to write comedy. I wrote a little nightclub act, and he worked on it with me and took me to Improvisation in New York, which was a little nightclub. I got up and had my first laugh, and I became a laugh [prostitute].”
So, Liz had found her passion in comedy. She began auditioning at various improvisation clubs in New York City thereafter, though she was unsure about how good she was because of her limitations where the English language was concerned.
\“But because I was so conscious of it, I can get a laugh out of a line that is not funny. I’m just a laugh [prostitute]. I look for laughs that don’t exist, or I create them. A lot of people don’t like that and say, ‘Don’t do that.’ They want the laugh where they want the laugh, and they don’t want anything taken away from the star,” Torres explained.
“If the star is not up to par with the part…I have worked with some very serious actors who have no sense of comedy and comedic timing. If you do something out of whack it throws them off – like getting a laugh. So, it’s a gift and a curse at the same time.”
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