Artist Maria Bamford

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Maria Bamford

Maria Bamford is one of those comedians whose “real” personalities seem mysterious. She shifts through personas and voices—her parents, bitchy former classmates, airheads, co-workers, monsters, Alicia Keys—so seamlessly and with such pitch-perfect imitation that it’s easy to think Bamford is 100 percent vessel, 0 percent real person. Of course those numbers are way off in real life—it’s 50-50, at least—where Bamford comes across as far happier and more “together” than her obsessive-compulsive onstage personality. That composure is hard-won; Bamford’s CD, Unwanted Thoughts Syndrome, mines for laughs the real mental disorder that dominated her life for roughly 30 years. Christmas 2009 and ’10 TV commercials transformed Bamford into a militant Target store enthusiast, and later into a viral video phenom.

Updated 04/27/2011