As a third grader, Sarah Silverman had already narrowed her future career to three options: Comedian, actress or masseuse. She landed pretty quickly on comedian and never looked back, dropping out of college with the support of a father who financed her NYC apartment and three-year curriculum of comedy club work.

Success came rapidly and almost unbelievably when she was hired as a Saturday Night Live writer at just 22 – sans audition. She was fired almost as rapidly, without any of her work ever appearing on the show. Former SNL writer Bob Odenkirk said, “I could see how it wouldn’t work… because she’s got her own voice, she’s very much Sarah Silverman all the time. She can play a character but she doesn’t disappear into the character – she makes the character her.” Despite some noted guest TV and film appearances, Silverman never looked at standup as a stepping-stone to an acting career. She is a stand up comedian “the way some people are gay”.

Compulsively revealing the painful (she dealt with depression and bed wetting into her teens) and the uncomfortable, the more she becomes herself, the funnier (if more shocking) we find her, whether we admit it or not. Her combination of honesty and true comedic skill results not in a series of jokes, but a series of insights that connect – all the more stealthily for being cloaked in humor.

Sarah Silverman talks to Off Camera about her breakout special Jesus is Magic, the decision to film the more recent We Are Miracles in front of a vast audience of 39, and living the low-overhead dream.