She first rose to prominence for her brief stint as a writer and cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live during its 19th season between 1993 and 1994.

For her work on the program, Silverman was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.

[3] Her comedy roles address social taboos and controversial topics, including racism, sexism, homophobia, politics, and religion, sometimes having her comic character endorse them in a satirical or deadpan fashion.

[4][5] During the 2016 United States presidential election, she became increasingly politically active; she initially campaigned for Bernie Sanders but later spoke in support of Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

[10] Her mother had been George McGovern's personal campaign photographer and founded the theater company New Thalian Players, while Donald trained as a social worker and also ran a clothing store, Crazy Sophie's Outlet.

[13][24][25][26] After beginning her stand-up career in 1992, Silverman was part of the 1993–94 season of the NBC sketch comedy program Saturday Night Live (SNL) for eighteen weeks as a writer and featured player.

She has cited her SNL stint as a key reason why she has been so tough in her career,[28] and later expressed gratitude that her time on the program was short as it did not wind up defining her.

She also starred in the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show (1995–1997) and had the leading role for the 1997 independent film Who's the Caboose?, about a pair of New York comedians (Silverman and director Sam Seder) going to Los Angeles during pilot season to try to get a part in a television series; the film features numerous young comedians in supporting roles but never received a widespread theatrical release.

in the episode "48+1⁄2 Hours" (2002); Greg the Bunny as a series regular (2002); and on the puppet television comedy Crank Yankers as the voice of Hadassah Guberman (since 2002).

It received 64% positive ratings based on 84 reviews on the film critics aggregator Web site Rotten Tomatoes[32] and earned approximately $1.3 million at the box office.

[33] As part of the film's publicity campaign, she appeared online in Slate as the cover subject of Heeb magazine and in roasts on Comedy Central of Pamela Anderson and Hugh Hefner.

Silverman played a therapist in a skit for a bonus DVD of the album Lullabies to Paralyze by the band Queens of the Stone Age.

[47] On September 13, 2008, Silverman won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for writing the song "I'm Fucking Matt Damon".

She appeared in Strange Powers, the 2009 documentary by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara about cult songwriter Stephin Merritt and his band The Magnetic Fields.

[49] Silverman played Geraldine alongside Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen in Take This Waltz, written and directed by Sarah Polley.

[57][58][59][60] In Seth MacFarlane's western comedy film, A Million Ways to Die in the West, she played Ruth, a prostitute, who is in love with Edward (Giovanni Ribisi).

Among the those acting in the show were Tig Notaro, June Diane Raphael, Ken Leung, Jeff Goldblum, and Harris Wittels.

[62][63][64] In 2013, HBO announced that Silverman would star with Patti LuPone and Topher Grace in a situation comedy pilot called People in New Jersey, produced by SNL's Lorne Michaels.

On October 10, 2019, she was featured in a 30-minute YouTube documentary called Laughing Matters, created by SoulPancake in collaboration with Funny or Die, wherein a variety of comedians discuss mental health.

[71] Guy Aoki of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) publicly objected to her use of the slur, and the two had an open discussion on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.

[79] Later that year, Silverman was criticized for mocking Britney Spears' "slutty clothes" and calling her two sons "adorable mistakes" at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

[82] In 2023, during the Israel-Hamas war, Silverman was criticized for sharing an Instagram post on her story that supported Israel's restriction of food, water and electricity to Gaza.

[86] Silverman's autobiography, published in April 2010, titled The Bedwetter, explores the subject of bedwetting as well as other personal stories from her life.

"[88] She stated that she does not want to have biological children because "there's just millions of kids that have no parents" in the world and to avoid the risk that they might inherit her depression.

Another older sister, Susan, is a rabbi who lives in Jerusalem with her husband, Yosef Abramowitz, the co-founder and president of Arava Power Company, and their five children.

[94][95][96][97] In an interview on The Howard Stern Show in October 2018, Silverman revealed that she was one of several female comedians who witnessed fellow comic Louis C.K.

[86] She referred to the relationship in some of her comedy, joking: "I'm Jewish, but I wear this Saint Christopher medal sometimes; my boyfriend is Catholic – but you know ... it was cute the way he gave it to me.

[111] In 2015, Silverman signed an open letter which the ONE Campaign had been collecting signatures for; the letter was addressed to Angela Merkel and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, urging them to focus on women, as they served as the head of the G7 in Germany and the African Union in Ethiopia, respectively, which would start to set the priorities in development funding in advance of a main UN summit in September 2015 that would establish new development goals for a generation.

She supports social justice programs to find work opportunities for non-violent offenders and was a primary investor in Lowell Herb Co,[119] aiming to end cannabis prohibition in the United States.

[123] She also left the Democratic Socialists of America after being a member for several years, citing their published response to the initial Hamas attacks and lack of support for Israel.