Faith Coley Salie is an American journalist, writer, actress, comedian, television and radio host and Rhodes scholar who grew up in Georgia. She is a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and a panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. She hosts Science Goes To The Movies on PBS and CUNY TV. Her first book, Approval Junkie, a collection of humorous essays, was published by Crown in April 2016.
Early life
Born in South Weymouth, Massachusetts, Salie is the youngest of three children born to Robert Salie and Gail Coley Salie. She grew up in Dunwoody, Georgia with her two older brothers, Doug and David Salie. Salie was raised Roman Catholic. Salie began dancing at age three and decided she wanted to be an actor after getting the lead in the fourth-grade class play. She began performing professional children’s theatre at 13. One of her first jobs was acting in a Chick-fil-A industrial film. In college, she performed in plays and musicals with Matt Damon, Mo Rocca and China Forbes. In graduate school, she performed improvisational comedy with Eric Garcetti, the current mayor of Los Angeles.
Salie's first film appearance was in The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, playing the rival to Diane Lane's character. She flew back and forth from England to Georgia to film her scenes. Upon moving to Los Angeles from Oxford, she appeared in small roles on Sweet Valley High and Married... with Children before being cast on . She played the role of Sarina Douglas in two episodes, "Statistical Probabilities" and "Chrysalis |Chrysalis". Salie, as Sarina Douglas, appears on a Deep Space Nine trading card. Salie starred in the 2004 Bravo improvisational situation comedySignificant Others, as well as other television sitcoms and dramas, including Sex and the City and Unhappily Ever After, in which she played goth girl Caitlin Blackpool for a season. As a stand-up comedian and "pop-culture pundit," she appeared on several VH-1 shows including Best Week Ever, I Love the...90s, and Undateable. In 2006, Salie moved to Manhattan to host the Public Radio International show Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie. It was a daily satirical news and entertainment show and podcast. On Fair Game, Salie interviewed hundreds of newsmakers including Lorne Michaels, Jimmy Carter, Anthony Hopkins, Zach Galifianakis, Leonard Nimoy, and Chelsea Handler. She was a regular contributor to an ethics column for O, The Oprah Magazine, and a regular panelist on Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. Salie has appeared as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Anderson, The Ricki Lake Show, and Piers Morgan Live. Salie hosted the series Treehugger TV for Planet Green and was a panelist on BBC America's Would You... Rather? with Graham Norton. In February 2011, she hosted a Bravo special of Approval Matrix, a TV adaptation of New York magazine's feature by the same name. She has moderated at the World Science Festival and the Comic-Con. From 2008 to 2010, she hosted Sundance Channel’s coverage of the Sundance Film Festival, where she interviewed actors and directors such as Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Redford, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Billy Bob Thornton, Joan Rivers, Michelle Williams, Dax Shepard, Elijah Wood, and Ashton Kutcher. Salie has been a contributor to CBS News Sunday Morning since 2009. Her work often covers stories with a scientific angle. She regularly does commentaries on the show, on topics ranging from freezing her eggs to vocal fry. She is a regular panelist on the NPR quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, and served as a guest host for the July 28, 2018 episode. She hosted the live, daily Sirius show News & Notes for the Entertainment Weekly channel in 2013. In 2012, Salie hosted the National Book Awards. Her show Science Goes to the Movies, in which she interviews scientists about pop culture, premiered in 2015. In 2016, Salie guest-hosted the NPR show Ask Me Another. Her book Approval Junkie: Adventures in Caring Too Much, "a collection of daring, funny essays chronicling the author's adventures during her lifelong quest for approval," was published on April 19, 2016. She developed the material from her book into a one-woman show, which ran at the Alliance Theatre's Hertz Stage in Atlanta April 5–28, 2019. The production was directed by Amanda Watkins.
Personal life
Salie is married to John Semel. They were married on October 9, 2011 in Rome. The couple have a son, born in 2012, and a daughter, born in 2014. Salie was previously married to Nick Holly, brother of actress Lauren Holly, in the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. They wed in 2005 and divorced in 2009. She lives in New York City with her family.
