A Comic Sweet as Punch

"Her work is so minimalist. Like a haiku," says Paul Provenza, director of "The Aristocrats." "It's beautiful."

Much is made of Silverman's looks. Maxim pronounced her hot. She is a swizzle stick of a thing, dark-eyed, raven-haired, a 34-year-old ingenue in a tight T-shirt, sneakers and jeans, which is her offstage outfit. "Sarah's femininity is handled differently than other women comics'," Provenza says. "It is art at its best. It's unselfconscious self-awareness. She's aware of her sexuality. Every guy in the room is. It's fundamental to what she does. But she uses it as a bass line."

To lull the audience and then strike -- like how can these disturbing things come out of that cute little mouth?

Silverman grew up in a middle-class, smart-alecky Jewish household in New Hampshire. Her parents divorced. She suffered from depression in her teens. Her father owned discount clothing stores, including one called Crazy Sophie's. Her mother ran a theater company at a college. Her sister Laura Silverman is an actress who appears in "Jesus Is Magic." Another sister, Susan, a rabbi, is the author of a book titled "Jewish Family & Life: Traditions, Holidays and Values for Today's Parents and Children." Sarah Silverman dates Jimmy Kimmel, the ABC late-night host, formerly of "The Man Show."

"I was a class clown," Silverman says. "I went to summer school in Boston when I was 17, and that was the first time I did stand-up. I moved to New York when I was 18 and started passing out fliers for comedy clubs. I knew I wanted to do it."

She attended NYU. "My dad cut me a deal where if I dropped out of school, he'd pay for the next three years -- sophomore, junior, senior years -- of rent. And that saved him tons of money from college. And gives me that time to do stand-up. It's good because by the time I would have graduated, by the time I turned 22, I was on 'Saturday Night Live.' "

She lasted a year.

"A certain amount of disillusionment can be a good thing," Silverman says.

They canned you.

"By fax."

Nice.

"They faxed my agent. A month before my second season. It was a slaughter. It wasn't personal. I didn't make an imprint at all. I was also destroyed. It took me a year to get my confidence back. But like a broken bone, I was stronger. After that, nothing fazed me."