Actors - Conan O'Brien

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	Actors - Conan O'Brien

Conan Christopher O’Brien (born April 18, 1963) is a comedian best known as host of NBC's late-night talk show/variety show Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

O'Brien is scheduled to take over for Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show in 2009. As of 2006, Conan's Late Night successor is unknown.

Biography

Early life

Conan Christopher O’Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He is the third of six children in an Irish American family, one of four boys. His father, Dr. Thomas O’Brien, was a research physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, specializing in infectious diseases. His mother, Ruth Reardon O’Brien, is a former partner of the Boston law firm of Ropes & Gray . His sister Jane is a comedy writer and producer.

After graduating as the valedictorian from Brookline High School (Brookline, Massachusetts), O’Brien entered Harvard University. Throughout his college career, he was a writer for the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. During his sophomore and junior years, O’Brien served as the Lampoon's president, making him only the second person ever to serve as president twice, and the first person to have done it in 85 years. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1985 with a concentration in American History and Literature.

Television career

O’Brien moved to Los Angeles upon graduating from Harvard to join the writing staff of HBO's Not Necessarily the News. He spent two years with that show, and performed regularly with improvisational groups like The Groundlings. He also acted in corporate infomercials to earn money during this period.

After Not Necessarily the News, O’Brien worked as the warm-up comic for The Wilton North Report, a Fox show that was on the air for just four weeks. O’Brien then moved on to the Happy Happy Good Show, a stage show being put on in Chicago, Illinois at the time In January 1988 Saturday Night Live
's executive producer Lorne Michaels hired O’Brien as a writer. During his 3½ years on SNL he wrote such recurring sketches as "Mr. Short-Term Memory" and "The Girl Watchers", the latter of which was first performed by Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz. O’Brien also wrote the sketch "Nude Beach", which became infamous due to the fact that the word penis appeared in it no fewer than 42 times, much of it in the form of song . He also appeared as an extra in some skits, occasionally with a speaking role. In 1989, he and the other SNL writers were awarded an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series.

In the spring of 1991, O’Brien left SNL to write and produce a pilot for the television show Lookwell, starring Adam West. It was broadcast on NBC in July but was not picked up as a series. That fall, O’Brien signed on as a writer and producer for the Fox series The Simpsons, where he also became a supervising producer. In a speech he gave at Harvard on Class Day in 2000, O’Brien credited The Simpsons with "saving" him, a reference to the career slump he was experiencing prior to his hiring for that show . During his time as a writer for The Simpsons, he created the character of Captain Horatio McCallister (the Sea Captain). Of the episodes he wrote while there, he considers "Marge vs. the Monorail" to be his favorite.

Late Night

On April 26, 1993, Lorne Michaels chose O’Brien to be David Letterman's successor as host of Late Night and Andy Richter signed on as his sidekick. It received generally unfavorable critical reviews for the first 2-3 years after its debut. Indeed, the show was reportedly cancelled by network executives, but was allowed to remain on a week-to-week basis when it was realized there was no programming available to replace it.

Since then, however, O’Brien and the Late Night writing team have consistently been nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series, though they have not won as of 2006. In 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004 he and the Late Night writing staff won the Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series.

In 2001 he formed his own television production company, Conaco, which has subsequently shared in the production credits for Late Night.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Conan O'Brien ]

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Actors - Conan O'Brien

Biography

Early life

Television career

Late Night

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