Dec. 16--Kathy Griffin's start as a comedian can be traced to the jokes she cracked and the pranks she pulled while living in Oak Park.
"As I unleashed my terror on unsuspecting classmates, nuns at my grade school wrote notes home: 'Kathleen would do well if she applied herself, but she's too busy flirting with boys and trying to be the class clown,'" Griffin told The Wall Street Journal in a story posted online Tuesday.
Griffin, 55, described her home and upbringing in Oak Park as she showed off her 8,000-square-foot Hollywood Hills home. She said she lived in Forest Park before moving to a two-story, four-bedroom house on Home Avenue in Oak Park.
"Our living room was show space, so our favorite area of the house was the basement. It was divided into two parts -- half had a round furnace as its centerpiece and a concrete floor. I roller-skated around the furnace. The other half was a den with a bar and an upright piano, which was weird since no one in my family played," Griffin recalled.
Griffin said she shared a bedroom with her sister Joyce, and her mother, a hospital cashier, only cooked in the galley kitchen on Sundays.
She skipped college to move to California, where she was a $35-a-day TV and movie extra. She had parts on "Seinfeld" and "Suddenly Susan" before scoring her own reality show on the Bravo network. She's known for eviscerating celebrities.
Griffin said she now lives in a five-bedroom, seven-bathroom house that she purchased in 2003.
"I love being on the road but I also like being home -- where my house-sitters spend more time than I do," she said.
Griffin, who has more than two dozen tour dates booked for 2016, is set to co-host "New Year's Eve Live" with Anderson Cooper on CNN.
