Happy birthday, Mindy Kaling!

In honor of her 36th birthday this week, here are 10 reasons we’re celebrating the life of one of Hollywood’s funniest women.

 

10. Mindy Kaling was born Vera Mindy Chokalingam on June 24, 1979. She’s gone by her middle name since birth, because her parents thought it sounded more American. They also got the name from the TV sitcom Mork and Mindy.

She was very creative from a very young age. Here she is at five with a beaver puppet she made.

 

9. When she still went by Mindy Chokalingam, she wrote and badly drew a daily comic strip for her college newspaper, The Dartmouth. Called Badly Drawn Girl, the strip took on campus-specific subjects like the Dartmouth dining halls and tackled the world of college a capella groups way before Pitch Perfect.

8. The funny thing is, she was herself in a college a capella group, a socially conscious, all-girl bunch called the Rockapellas, for which she also wrote skits. Years later, she showed off her singing voice on The Office:



 

7. During college, she worked for Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Watch her tell the story of being the worst intern ever as a guest on Conan O’Brien’s current show.

 

6. After college, Kaling began performing stand-up comedy, which is when she shortened her last name so emcees would stop mispronouncing and making fun of “Chokalingam.” Here’s part of a Comedy Central compilation album she’s on doing a bit about movie piracy and an impression of Scarlett Johansson.

 

5. In 2002 and 2003, she played Ben Affleck in an off-Broadway hit called Matt & Ben that fictionally depicted the writing of the script for Good Will Hunting. Kaling penned the show with Brenda Withers, who played Matt Damon. Watch a clip:

 

Many years later, she got to work with Matt Damon on a Super Bowl commercial for Nationwide Insurance, and we’re sure that wasn’t weird for her at all.

 

4. Although Kaling is mainly known for TV work, she has done a fair share of memorable supporting movie roles over the past decade. Here is her career on the big screen in five great GIFs:

 

3. She auditioned for Saturday Night Live in 2005 and was invited to join the writing team, but she had a contract writing and costarring in The Office. In 2006, she got to cowrite one SNL episode. This single Weekend Update bit is the only part that made it to the air:

 

Three years later, she got to make her on-screen SNL debut as herself in the following sketch:

 

2. Last year, Kaling participated in the annual Hollywood Reporter Comedy Actresses Roundtable, where she intelligently and humorously addressed how the media perceives her success and also how she likes getting to make out a lot on her show. It’s a must watch for her and the rest of the women.

 

1. She can currently be heard in theaters in the Pixar animated feature Inside Out as the emotion “Disgust.” Kaling introduces her character in this mini featurette: