Actors - Seth MacFarlane

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	Actors - Seth MacFarlane

Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (born October 26, 1973 in Kent, Connecticut) is an American animator, screenwriter, producer, director and voice actor. He is best known as the creator of the animated series Family Guy and American Dad!

Biography

Early career

MacFarlane received his diploma at the Kent School in Connecticut, whose headmaster publicly rebuked MacFarlane for his "low" brand of humor. Seth studied animation at the Rhode Island School of Design. While in college, he created a short film entitled The Life of Larry, an early ancestor of Family Guy. After graduation, he was hired by Hanna-Barbera Productions and later worked as an animator and writer for Cartoon Network's Cartoon Cartoons
series, which included Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Laboratory and Cow and Chicken. He was also a writer for the animated version of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
.

In 1996, MacFarlane created a sequel to The Life of Larry for Hanna-Barbera Cartoons called Larry and Steve, which featured the bumbling middle-aged Larry and his highly intelligent dog Steve. The short was broadcast as one of Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons. Executives at Fox saw both Larry shorts and contracted MacFarlane to create a series based on the characters.

Immediately before starting Family Guy in 1998, Fred Seibert (who brought MacFarlane to Hanna-Barbera) asked him to write and produce a short titled "Zoomates" for Frederator Studios' Oh Yeah! Cartoons on Nickelodeon.

Seth is a skilled pianist and singer who, as a young man, worked with the same vocal coaches as Frank Sinatra. He is an avid fan of musicals and often employs musical numbers in his work.

Family Guy

Family Guy is an animated series which follows the life of the Griffin family. Patriarch Peter Griffin, an obese sexist oaf, shares a thick middle-class New England accent with wife Lois, a kind, calm, level-headed housewife who frequently gets caught up in the moment and acts as irrational as her husband. Lois teaches piano lessons from home part-time while tending to her offspring. Only daughter and oldest child Meg Griffin craves social interaction, respect of her privacy and the attention of her school's James Dean-esque cool kid. Her plain looks are the butt of many jokes. Middle child Chris Griffin is an obese pre-teen with subnormal intelligence, who has a talent for drawing and many of the same hedonistic impulses as his dad. By far the most eloquent and rational member of the household is Brian Griffin, a talking family dog who drinks alcohol, smokes tobacco, sings, acts and is Peter's best friend. Infant Stewie Griffin is a highly-cognizant genius infant with a head shaped like a sideways-sitting football and an effete, archaic English accent based on the voice of Rex Harrison. Stewie is hellbent on world domination and the defeat of all who oppose him, especially his mother. The only family member who consistently understands him when he talks and converses with him is Brian; the rest of them usually act like they only hear "baby noises" when he speaks and treat him like the normal, temperamental baby they believe him to be. On the show, MacFarlane provides the voices of Peter, Brian, Stewie, the sex-maniac neighbor Glen Quagmire, and the news anchor Tom Tucker who is seen regularly on the show.

The show's future looked optimistic after high Nielsen ratings for the pilot episode, "Death Has a Shadow" shown after the 1999 Super Bowl on Fox. The show was moved to many different time slots after ratings declined, and Fox cancelled Family Guy after three seasons and 50 episodes. A huge undertaking by the show's loyal fanbase worked to bring it back to life. The show became a hit on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block in 2004 and stellar DVD sales of the show's three seasons led to the show's unprecedented May 1, 2005 return to Fox's Sunday night lineup, where it remains. In 2005 the show was aired alongside American Dad! on BBC2 in the UK.

American Dad!

American Dad!, MacFarlane's latest undertaking, was first shown after Super Bowl XXXIX as a sneak preview on February 6, 2005. It then began airing regularly on Fox on May 1, 2005. It focuses on Stan Smith, a CIA agent convinced that terrorists are everywhere, even in his own household. He has a loving wife and two children, along with two unusual houseguests: Roger, the extraterrestrial alien who rescued Stan from Area 51, and Klaus the goldfish who hosts the transplanted brain of a German Olympic skier.

Notable guest appearances

MacFarlane is an avid fan of Star Trek and has appeared as the engineer Ensign Rivers on the show Star Trek: Enterprise in the Season 3 episode The Forgotten (3.20) and the Season 4 episode Affliction (4.15). Since then, Patrick Stewart has had a recurring role as the director of the CIA in American Dad! He also appeared in a 2002 episode of the Gilmore Girls entitled "Lorelai's Graduation Day," (2.21) as a classmate of Lorelai's.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Seth MacFarlane ]

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