We Love: Amy Poehler

As if there haven’t been enough reasons to love Amy Poehler since she burst on the comedy scene as part of the Upright Citizens Brigade, her work on Saturday Night Live deserves a particularly loud shout-out—especially her dead-on and hilarious impression of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The most recent sketch, featuring Poehler and her sister in comedy Tina Fey, showed Hillary Clinton sharing a podium with Sarah Palin, and trying desperately to keep from losing her mind. This is not to give short shrift to her numerous other fantastic impressions—Ann Coulter, Nancy Grace, Sharon Osbourne, even gender-bending takes on personas like Project Runway’s Christian Siriano and Rep. Dennis Kucinich—or to overlook her terrific work sharing the “Weekend Update” anchor desk with Fey. Poehler’s roles in films such as Mean Girls, Blades of Glory, Baby Mama, and Hamlet 2 have kept us all in stitches, and it’s rumored that she will be moving on to a primetime television series now that she’s said goodbye to SNL. Poehler also just finalized a deal to create a new online series to air in the fall of 2008 called Smart Girls at the Party, a web-only show aimed at young women and designed to improve their self-esteem. Oh, and she’s due to give birth to her first child, with husband Will Arnett (of Arrested Development fame), in October 2008.

We love incredibly smart, insanely funny, and wildly ambitious ladies, and Poehler fits the mold like no other. A huge thumbs-up for all she does, and a hope that her maternity leave doesn't keep her from the small screen for too long….