Amy Poehler, one of the newest cast members of Saturday Night Live, was having lunch at Serafina on Lafayette Street. She wore a red sweater and jeans, said "yes, sir" to the waiter and referred to me once as "the gentleman."

I told Ms. Poehler if I asked a question she didn't like, she could say "skip."

"'What's your bra size?'" Ms. Poehler said, erupting. "Skip! That's your first question: 'How do you like to do it?'"

After 11 episodes of SNL, Ms. Poehler, 30, is becoming more visible, appearing in as many as five sketches a show. But when she took a knitting class recently, the teacher was suspicious. The teacher asked Ms. Poehler: "They introduce you in the beginning?"

Recently, however, she had opened a bank account at Citibank, and the guy at the bank was impressed. "He goes, 'Saturday Night Live! How'd you schwing that?'" Ms. Poehler said. "And I'm like, 'How did I schwing it? I just schwung it.'"

Ms. Poehler grew up in Massachusetts. Her parents were schoolteachers.

"My mother took too many Valiums and smashed the mirror," she said in a fake theatrical voice. "My father came downstairs, and he said, 'You stupid drunk,' and slapped her. And I ran to take the car and meet the teenage hoodlum by the Dairy Queen, and I got pregnant by my professor, robbed a liquor store. And I used to throw up in empty milk cartons and hide them under my bed."

She was kidding around, of course. Ms. Poehler attended Boston College, joined an improv troupe, got hooked and moved to Chicago in 1993 to study at Second City. She lived cheaply, rode her bike everywhere, did catering.

"I was never desperate," she said. "I sucked dick by choice, not by necessity."

In 1995, Ms. Poehler's group-the four-person Upright Citizens Brigade-moved to Manhattan, found an old burlesque theater, put on crazy fake heads and handed out fliers on Astor Place. U.C.B. turned into a major hit. Ms. Poehler still performs on Sunday nights at U.C.B.'s West 22nd Street theater, in an improv show called "A.S.S.S.S.A.T." She now lives in Tribeca, with two dogs and a boyfriend.

I had an "homage to Amy" I found on the Internet. Some guy had written a poem: Methinks you truly are a goddess / Thou are likened to a flower / I hope I don't make you nauseous.

Ms. Poehler scanned the poem. "I like this," she said. "Oh, my! Wow, that's very nice.

"My father loves to, like, check out the news groups and tell me about it, and finally I'll just be like, 'I can't, I don't want to hear anymore about it,'" Ms. Poehler continued. "News groups are brutal: 'What's up with the ugly girl?!!! Her face looks like ... ' or 'I'd fuck her, but only from behind!'"

Ms. Poehler said she's learned how to deal with fame, but she still gets annoyed. "There are certain professions where people feel like if they wanted to they could do [it], which they could never do," she said. "Especially SNL-everyone's grown up with it, they've seen it, they have big opinions about it, and they think that you want to hear them. It's like, everybody I know that is successfully working has worked really hard and really paid their dues. I guess as you get older, it's like"-and here Ms. Poehler switched to a crazy-old-lady voice-"'I used to stand outside in Chicago 10 years ago and hand out fliers and nobody came.'"

Ms. Poehler paused. "It's like the banker guy asking me, 'How did you schwing that?'" she said. "Oh, I guess I worked 10 years to get on the show. I guess I gave up making money for 10 years. I guess I decided not to do what you did, which was to have a steady job and own a house. I gave up 10 years of that-so I guess that's how I schwung it."

-George Gurley