Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen Seinfeld is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, filmmaker, and television producer specializing in observational comedy. Seinfeld gained stardom playing a fictionalized version of himself in the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, which he co-created and wrote with Larry David. Seinfeld earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 1995. The show is one of the most acclaimed and popular sitcoms of all time. He has since created and produced the reality series The Marriage Ref, and created and hosted the web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, the latter of which earned him three Webby Awards. He also co-produced, co-wrote, and starred in the DreamWorks animated film Bee Movie and the Netflix comedy Unfrosted.
He has released four standup specials, his first being Stand-Up Confidential, followed by I'm Telling You for the Last Time, Jerry Before Seinfeld and 23 Hours to Kill.
Seinfeld has received numerous accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards as well as nominations for four Grammy Awards. In 2004, Comedy Central named him the 12th-greatest stand-up comedian of all time. In 2017, Rolling Stone named him the 7th-greatest stand-up comedian of all time.
Seinfeld has also written three books starting with SeinLanguage, followed by the children's book Halloween, and the comedic compilation book Is This Anything?. He is a fan of coffee and automobiles. He practices transcendental meditation. He is married to author and philanthropist Jessica Seinfeld, with whom he has three children.
Early life and education
Jerome Allen Seinfeld was born on April 29, 1954, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York City. His father, Kalmen Seinfeld, a sign painter, was from Hungary and collected jokes that he heard while serving in World War II. His mother, Betty and her parents, Selim and Salha Hosni, were Syrian Jews from Aleppo. Their nationality was stated as Turkish when they immigrated in 1917, as Syria was under the Ottoman Empire. Seinfeld has an older sister, Carolyn. Salha's mother, Garez Dayan, Seinfeld's great-grandmother, was a member of the Dayan rabbinic family, who claim ancestry back to the Medieval Exilarchs, and from the Exilarchs back to the Biblical King David. Seinfeld's second cousin is alternative metal musician and actor Evan Seinfeld.Seinfeld grew up in Massapequa, on Long Island, in Nassau County and attended Massapequa High School. At 16, he spent time volunteering in Kibbutz Sa'ar in Israel. He attended the State University of New York at Oswego, and transferred after his second year to Queens College of the City University of New York in Flushing, from which he graduated in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and theater.
Career
1976–1987: Rise to prominence
Seinfeld developed an interest in stand-up comedy after brief stints in college productions. He appeared on open-mic nights at Budd Friedman's Improv Club while attending Queens College. After graduation in 1976, he tried out at an open-mic night at New York City's Catch a Rising Star, which led to an appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special. In 1980, he had a small recurring role on the sitcom Benson, playing Frankie, a mail-delivery boy who had comedy routines that no one wanted to hear. Seinfeld was abruptly fired from the show due to creative differences. Seinfeld said that he was not told he had been fired until he arrived for a read-through session and found that there was no script for him. In January 1981, he performed stand-up on An Evening at the Improv. In May, Seinfeld made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, impressing Carson and the audience, leading to frequent appearances on that show and others, including Late Night with David Letterman. On September 5, 1987, his first one-hour special Stand-Up Confidential aired live on HBO.1988–1998: ''Seinfeld'' and stardom
Seinfeld created The Seinfeld Chronicles with Larry David in 1988 for NBC. It was renamed Seinfeld to avoid confusion with the short-lived teen sitcom The Marshall Chronicles. By its third season, Seinfeld had become the most watched sitcom on American television. The final episode aired in 1998, and the show has been a popular syndicated re-run ever since. NBC offered Seinfeld $110 million—a record $5 million an episode for a 22-episode tenth season—but he declined. Along with Seinfeld, the show starred Saturday Night Live alumna Julia Louis-Dreyfus and established actors Michael Richards and Jason Alexander. Alexander played George, a caricature of Larry David. Seinfeld is the only actor to appear in every episode.1998–2010: Established career
After he ended his sitcom, Seinfeld moved back to New York City and returned to stand-up comedy instead of staying in Los Angeles and furthering his acting career. In 1998, he went on tour and recorded a comedy special, titled I'm Telling You for the Last Time. The process of developing and performing new material at clubs around the world was chronicled in a 2002 documentary, Comedian, which also featured fellow comic Orny Adams and was directed by Christian Charles. Seinfeld has written several books, mostly archives of past routines. In the late 1990s, Apple Computer came up with the advertising slogan "Think different" and produced a 60-second commercial to promote the slogan. This commercial showed people who were able to "think differently", such as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. It was later cut short to 30 seconds and altered such that Seinfeld was included at the end, although he had not been in the original cut. This shorter version of the commercial aired only once, during the series finale of Seinfeld.In 2004, Seinfeld appeared in two commercial webisodes promoting American Express, titled The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman. In these, Seinfeld appeared with a cartoon rendering of Superman, to whom reference was made in numerous episodes of Seinfeld as Seinfeld's hero, voiced by Patrick Warburton. The webisodes were directed by Barry Levinson and aired briefly on television. Seinfeld and "Superman" were also interviewed by Matt Lauer in a specially recorded interview for the Today show. Also that year, Seinfeld appeared at the National Museum of American History to donate the "puffy shirt" he wore in the Seinfeld episode of the same name. He also gave a speech when presenting the "puffy shirt", saying humorously that "This is the most embarrassing moment of my life." In 2006, Seinfeld had a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live as host Julia Louis-Dreyfus' assassin. Louis-Dreyfus in her opening monologue mentioned the "Seinfeld curse". While talking about how ridiculous the "curse" was, a stage light suddenly fell next to her. The camera moved to a catwalk above the stage where Seinfeld was standing, holding a large pair of bolt cutters. He angrily muttered, "Damn it!" upset that it did not hit her. Louis-Dreyfus continued to say that she is indeed not cursed.
Seinfeld appeared at the 79th Academy Awards in 2007 as the presenter for "Best Documentary". Before announcing the nominations, he did a monologue about the unspoken agreement between movie theater owners and movie patrons. On October 4, 2007, Seinfeld made a guest appearance as himself in the 30 Rock episode "SeinfeldVision". On February 24, 2008, at the 80th Academy Awards, Seinfeld appeared as the voice of his Bee Movie animated character Barry, presenting Best Animated Short Film. Before announcing the nominees, he showed a montage of film clips featuring bees, saying that they were some of his early work.
Amidst his spring 2008 tour, Seinfeld performed in his hometown of New York City for a one-night-only show at the Hammerstein Ballroom to benefit Stand Up for a Cure, a charity aiding lung cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. That fall, Seinfeld became the pitchman for Windows Vista, as part of a $300-million advertising campaign by Microsoft. The ads, which were intended to create interest for Windows in support of the subsequent "I'm a PC" advertisements, were cut from television after three installments; Microsoft opted to continue with the "I'm a PC" advertisements and run the Seinfeld ads on the Microsoft website as a series of longer advertisements. In 2009, Seinfeld and the entire cast of Seinfeld appeared for a reunion in Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. The fictional reunion took place in the seventh season's finale and starred most of the original cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, in a multiple-episode arc. Seinfeld appeared on an episode of the Starz original series Head Case. As was the case in many of his previous guest appearances on sitcoms, he played himself.
In Australia, Seinfeld appeared on a series of advertisements for the Greater Building Society, a building society based in New South Wales and southeastern Queensland. His appearance in these ads was highly publicized and considered a coup for the society, being the third time Seinfeld had appeared in a television commercial. The advertisements were filmed in Cedarhurst, Long Island, with the street designed to emulate Beaumont Street in Hamilton, where the Greater's head offices are located. Seinfeld also wrote the scripts for the 15 advertisements that were filmed. The ads largely aired in the Northern New South Wales television market, where the society has most of its branches. Seinfeld was the first guest on Jay Leno's talk show The Jay Leno Show, which premiered on September 14, 2009. Seinfeld was featured on Saturday Night Lives Weekend Update sketch to do the "Really!?!" segment with Seth Meyers. He executive produced and regularly appeared as a panelist in The Marriage Ref. In 2010, Seinfeld made a surprise guest appearance on The Howard Stern Show, ending the feud the two had in the early 1990s.
Seinfeld toured the U.S. in 2011 and made his first stand-up appearance in the United Kingdom in 11 years. That same year, he was a surprise guest on The Daily Show, helping Jon Stewart to suppress his urge to tell "cheap" "Michele Bachmann's husband acts gay" jokes. Seinfeld also launched a personal archives website at JerrySeinfeld.com and appeared in the HBO special Talking Funny with fellow comedians Chris Rock, Louis C.K., and Ricky Gervais in the same year.