Tina Fey, brilliant writer, comedian and creator of "Mean Girls," is not as she appears. If you're a fan of "Mean Girls," you might have expected Tina to relate more to protagonist Cady Heron (played by Lindsay Lohan). But in a recent interview with The EDIT, Tina reveals that being mean was a big part of her personality in high school.

“I was [the Mean Girl], I admit it openly,” Fey told the site. “That was a disease that had to be conquered."

Tina describes her mean girl phase as a coping mechanism for her teenage insecurities. "It’s another coping mechanism — it’s a bad coping mechanism — but when you feel less than (in high school, everyone feels less than everyone else for different reasons), in your mind it’s a way of leveling the playing field," she added. "Though of course it’s not. Saying something terrible about someone else does not actually level the playing field.”

A healthier (or at least more useful coping mechanism) for Tina growing up was comedy. "The desire to be funny – because you are never actually quite sure if you really are funny – is a coping mechanism, another way of ingratiating yourself."

Since then, Tina has incorporated both coping mechanisms into her work. There's "Mean Girls," of course, but Tina even skewered herself in an episode of "30 Rock" when character Liz Lemon went home and realized she was the true mean girl of her high school. If there's one thing to be learned from Tina, besides class and humor, is that cruelty is not the answer.