Stephen Colbert

At 59 years old, Stephen Colbert has this physical status:

Stephen Tyrone Colbert (bair) (born May 13, 1964) is an American comedian, writer, editor, politician, and television host.

Colbert trained to be an actor, but he became involved in improvisational theater while attending Northwestern University, where he met Second City director Del Close.

Colbert first appeared professionally undercover for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago, where his troupe mates included Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, comedians with whom he created the sketch comedy series Exit 57.

He wrote and appeared on the short-lived Dana Carvey exhibit before joining Sedaris and Dinello on the cult television show Strangers with Candy.

He gained notoriety for his work on the latter as the closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblett. Colbert's work as a reporter on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show earned him a lot of attention.

In 2005, he switched from The Daily Show to host The Colbert Report.

The Colbert Report, which included The O'Reilly Factor, a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows, included The Daily Show's news parody, in which he portrayed a caricatured version of conservative political pundits, was a parody of conservative political pundits.

Colbert was given a chance to appear as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2006, making the series one of Comedy Central's most rated series.

He was hired in 2015 to replace retiring David Letterman as host of the Late Show on CBS after he had ended The Colbert Report.

In September 2017, he hosted the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards. Colbert has received nine Primetime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and two Peabody Awards.

In 2006 and 2012, Colbert was selected as one of Time's 100 Most Influential People.

I Am America (And So Can You), Colbert's book. He was ranked No. 77, which was No. 1. In 2007, one of the New York Times Best Seller list was No. 1.

Early life

Colbert was born in Washington, D.C., and was the youngest of eleven children in a Catholic family. He grew up in Bethesda, Maryland. He grew up in the southern suburb of James Island, South Carolina. James III, Edward, Mary, William, Margo, Thomas, Elizabeth, Peter, and Stephen are in descending order by age. James William Colbert Jr., an immunologist and medical school dean at Yale University, Saint Louis University, and later at the Medical University of South Carolina, where he served as the school's first vice president of academic affairs from 1969 to 1969. Lorna Elizabeth Colbert (née Tuck), Stephen's mother, was a homemaker.

Colbert has portrayed his parents as devout people who also highly valued intellectualism and taught their children that it was possible to defy the faith and still be Catholic. Lorna has characterized Stephen as rambunctious in an interview. Southerners were often depicted as less as well-adequate on scripted television, and he learned how to debuff stereotypes of American news anchors as a child.

Although Colbert occasionally claims that his surname is French, he has ancestry from 15/16ths Ireland; one of his paternal great-grandmothers was of German and English descent; Many of his ancestors immigrated from Ireland to North America in the 19th century before and during the Great Famine. His surname was originally pronounced KOHL-brt in English, but Stephen Colbert's father, James, wanted to pronounce the word kohl-Bair but kept the /lbrt/ pronunciation out of respect for his own father. He gave his children the opportunity to spell the name however they pleased. Stephen began using /kol/ later in life, maximizing the opportunity to reimagine himself in a new place where no one knew him. In a February 12, 2009 interview with Stephen's brother Edward, an intellectual property lawyer, retained "/kolb/ or /ko/lbr/" as his second oldest brother asked him, "/kolb/ or /br/?" Ed replied "/kolb/," to which Stephen jokingly replied, "See you in Hell."

Peter and Paul, Colbert's father and his two brothers nearest in age, died in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 on September 11, 1974, when it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut, to teach the two boys. He has written about the effects of his death and his philosophy of grief and suffering. Lorna Colbert moved the family from James Island to the George Chisolm House in downtown Charleston, where they operated the carriage house as a bed and breakfast. Colbert found the change difficult and did not have a lot of people to make friends in his new neighborhood. Colbert later described himself as detached, lacking a sense of urgency about the subjects with which other children were concerned.

He developed a love for science fiction and fantasy books, particularly J. R. Tolkien's works, of which he is a huge fan. He also became interested in fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, which he later characterized as an early experience in acting and improvisation.

Colbert attended Episcopal Porter-Gaud School in Charleston, where he was involved in several school plays and contributed to the school newspaper but wasn't particularly motivated academically. He appeared on A Shot in the Dark, a Rolling Stones cover band, for a brief period during his childhood. He had hoped to study marine biology as a child, but an inner ear injury prompted him to avoid a career related to scuba diving and left him deaf in his right ear.

For a while, he was uncertain if he would attend college, but eventually, he applied and was admitted to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where a friend had also registered. He majored in philosophy and continued to participate in plays after arriving in 1982. He found the curriculum challenging, but it was more targeted than he had been attending high school, and he was able to apply himself to his studies. Despite the fact that Hampden–Sydney has a small theater audience, Colbert's involvement in acting increased during this period. He moved from Northwestern University as a theater major to research performance in 1984, becoming emboldened by the realization that performing was a passion even as no one was attending shows. In 1986, he graduated from Northwestern's School of Communication.

Personal life

Colbert is a Roman Catholic and used to teach Sunday school. He is an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church Monastery. Colbert is a voracious reader who has cited authors: J.R.R. Tolkien, J.D. Among others, Salinger, Robertson Davies, George Saunders, Larry Niven, Henry Kuttner, and Isaac Asimov are among his favorites.

Colbert has been married to Evelyn "Evie" McGee-Colbert since 1993. She is the granddaughter of renowned Charleston civil litigator Joseph McGee of the firm Buist Moore Smythe McGee. His wife appeared in an episode of Strangers with Candy as his mother. In addition, she had an uncredited cameo as a nurse in the series pilot and a credited one (as his wife Clair) in the film. McGee-Colbert was actually acquainted with Jon Stewart before she married her future husband in 1990. At the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, they met at the world premiere of Hydrogen Jukebox. Colbert later described the first time he saw Evie as being a love at first sight meeting; but, the two women soon learned they had grown up together in Charleston and had many common friends;

The couple have three children. They live in Montclair, New Jersey.

The pair are friends with Broadway actress Jackie Hoffman, who jokingly made a scene in Evelyn's 1993 wedding when she did not recognize Evelyn's bouquet.

Colbert suffered with bouts of depression and anxiety during his undergraduate and Second City years, which required him to be medicated. Colbert told Rolling Stone: In a 2018 interview, Colbert told Rolling Stone: "Colbert told Rolling Stone: 'You'll be able to say anything."

During a segment of The Late Show that identifies him as an INFP, Colbert used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

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Early career in comedy

Colbert spent his time at Northwestern with the intention of becoming a dramatic actor; mainly he appeared in experimental plays and was uninterested in comedies. He began performing improvisation in college, both in the campus improv team No Fun Mud Piranhas and in Chicago's Annoyance Theatre as part of Del Close's ImprovOlympic, rather than improvisational comedy. Colbert later wrote, "I wasn't going to do Second City because those Annoyance people didn't think it was true improv"; the Annoyance people snobby, mystical quality to the Annoyance peoples." Since Colbert graduated in 1986, however, he was in need of a job. A friend who was employed at Second City's box office offered him answering phones and selling souvenirs. Colbert accepted and learned that Second City workers were entitled to attend classes at their training center free of charge. Despite his earlier aversion to the comedy troupe, he registered for improvisation lessons and loved the experience immensely.

He was recruited shortly after to appear with Second City's touring company, initially as an understudy for Steve Carell. He worked with Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, with whom he often collaborated later in his career. The three comedians did not get along at first with their retelling – Dinello thought Colbert was uptight, pretentious, and cold, but Colbert thought of Dinello as "an illiterate thug" – but the trio became close friends while touring together, finding that they shared a common sense of humor.

Colbert left Second City and migrated to New York to work with them on the sketch comedy series Exit 57 when Sedaris and Dinello were given the opportunity to produce a television series for HBO Downtown Productions. In 1995, Comedy Central first broadcast the series and then continued in 1996. Despite the fact that the show lasted just 12 episodes, it received rave reviews and was nominated for five CableACE Awards in 1995, including best writing, appearance, and comedy series.

Television career

Colbert spent six months as a cast member and writer on The Dana Carvey Show, as well as actor Steve Carell, Robert Smigel, Charlie Kaufman, Louis C.K., and Dino Stamatopoulos, among other things, following Exit 57's cancellation. After its first episode aired and was cancelled after seven episodes, one reviewer called it "kamikaze satire" in "borderline-questionable taste." Colbert appeared on Saturday Night Live with Robert Smigel for a short time. Smigel performed his animated sketch The Ambitionably Gay Duo at The Dana Carvey Exhibition, and Ace's Generoso played Ace on both film and television, opposite Steve Carell as Gary. Before starting a life of comedy correspondent segments for Good Morning America, he spent time as a script consultant for VH1 and MTV. Only two of the segments he suggested were ever produced and only one of them were broadcast, but his agent referred him to Madeline Smithberg, who hired Colbert on a trial basis in 1997.

Colbert appeared with Sedaris and Dinello again to produce a new comedy series called Strangers with Candy during the same period. Colbert had already started working on The Daily Show in 1998 when Comedy Central picked up the series. As a result, he accepted a reduced role, filming only around 20 Daily Show segments a year before he started on the new series.

Strangers with Candy was created as a parody of after school specials following Jerri Blank's life, a 46-year-old dropout who returned to high school after 32 years of life on the streets. Its most notable feature, which was criticized for its use of offensive humor, came to an end with the broadcaster delivering a skewed, politically inaccurate moral lesson to the audience. Colbert appeared in many of Sedaris' and Dinello's books, as well as Jerri's tenacious but uninformed history professor Chuck Noblet, who appeared in the series dispensing inaccurate information to his students. Colbert has likened this to the character he portrayed on The Daily Show and later The Colbert Report, claiming that he has a very narrow niche in portraying "poorly informed, high-status idiot" characters. Noblet, a closeted homosexual, was having a "secret" affair with fellow teacher Geoffrey Jellineck, despite the fact that their friendship was well known to all around them. This obliviousness appears in Colbert's Daily Show and Colbert Report character.

In 1999 and 2000, Strangers with Candy had thirty episodes, which appeared on Comedy Central. Despite the fact that its ratings were not strong during its initial run, it has been described as a cult show with a small but dedicated following. Colbert resurrects his role in a film version that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 but then had a limited release in 2006. Mixed reviews were given to the film. Colbert also co-wrote the screenplay with Sedaris and Dinello.

When the show's second season was on, Colbert appeared on Comedy Central's parody-news series The Daily Show in 1997. Colbert was one of four correspondents on the show and was referred to as "the new guy" on air for his first two years, during which Craig Kilborn was host. Jon Stewart took over hosting duties after Kilborn left the show before the 1999 season, as well as being a writer and co-executive producer. Starting at this point, the series gradually began to take on a more political tone and heightened in esteem, particularly in the latter part of the 2000 presidential election season in the United States. The show's correspondents' positions were expanded to include more in-studio segments and international reports, which were almost always done in the studio with the support of a greenscreen.

Unlike Stewart, who essentially hosted The Daily Show as himself, Colbert developed a reporter character for his columns on the show, which was a parody of conservative political pundits like Bill O'Reilly. Colbert has characterized his correspondent as "a well-intentioned, poorly educated, high-status fool" and "a jerk who has spent a lot of his life playing not the fool" and "one who is able to cover it at least adequately enough to cope with the subjects that he covers." Colbert was regularly pitted against respected interview subjects, or in scripted dialogues, with the resultant discussion revealing the actor's insensitivity to whatever topic he was discussing. Colbert also demonstrated his point of view on any topic with humourous fallacies of logic. Other Daily Show correspondents have adopted a similar style; former reporter Rob Corddry recalls that they "just imitated Stephen Colbert for a year or two" when they first joined the show's cast in 2002. "I just decided to do my best Stephen Colbert impression," Correspondent Aasif Mandvi said.

Colbert appeared in many recurring segments for The Daily Show, including "Even Stevphen" with Steve Carell, in which both characters were supposed to discuss a certain topic but instead unleashed their dissatisfaction with one another. Colbert hosted "This Week in Heaven," a weekly magazine on topics relating to religion that was distributed with the support of the "God Machine." Colbert reported from the floor of the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention as part of The Daily Show's award-winning coverage of the 2000 and 2004 US presidential elections; several from the former were included in the magazine's The Daily Show: Indecision 2004 DVD release. Among the pieces he has referred to as his signature segments include "Grouse Hunting in Shropshire," in which he compared British aristocracy's mock lionization of a smoking-rights protester and a suspected chain-smoker, and his cameo appearances during his fake campaign for president. Colbert appeared in numerous episodes of The Daily Show, including the full week of March 3, 2002, when Stewart was scheduled to host Saturday Night Live. Rob Corddry took over "This Week in God" segments after Colbert left the show, but a video of Colbert's voice was still used as the sound effect for the God Machine. Old Colbert segments have been repurposed in later episodes of The Daily Show under the heading "Klassic Kolbert." In 2004, 2005, and 2006, Colbert received three Emmy Awards as a writer for The Daily Show.

From October 17, 2005 to December 18, 2014, Colbert appeared on his own television show The Colbert Report. The Colbert Report was a Daily Show spin-off that parodied television news broadcasting's basic principles, especially cable-personality political talk shows like The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity, and Glenn Beck. Colbert portrayed himself on the show as a blustery right-wing pundit, often thought of as an extension of his persona on The Daily Show. The show's co-creators Stewart, Colbert, and Ben Karlin in part as an opportunity to explore "the character-driven news" in a day-to-day news fashion, but more often focusing on the host's character's foibles.

The idea for The Report appeared in a series of Daily Show segments that promoted the then-fictional film as a joke. It was later developed by Stewart's Busboy Productions and pitched to Comedy Central, which broad-lighted the show; Comedy Central had already been looking for a way to extend the already popular Daily Show franchise past a half-hour. During the first week on television, the series debuted to strong ratings, with 1.2 million viewers per night. Since being one of the network's top-rated shows, Comedy Central signed a long-term deal for The Colbert Report within the first month on the air.

On The Colbert Report, a large portion of Colbert's personal life was reflected in his character. With the increased exposure of the character on the show, he often referred to his fascination and knowledge of Catholicism, science fiction, and The Lord of the Rings, as well as using real facts to create his character's history. His alternate was born in South Carolina and is married to his youngest of 11 siblings. Colbert's real career in acting and comedy was often downplayed or even denied outright, and he often referred to Dartmouth College (which was at the forefront of the conservative campus movement in the 1980s) rather than his alma mater, Northwestern. Colbert added two years to his Comedy Central deal in July 2012, extending the run of The Colbert Report until the end of 2014.

The final episode of "We'll Meet Again" featured Jon Stewart, Randy Newman, Bryan Cranston, Willie Nelson, Yo-Yo Ma, Mandy Patinkin, Joshua Haggman, Matthew McCarthy, Bill Murray, Jerry Carter, Samantha Stewart, George Lucas, James Franco, Patrick Stewart, George Lucas, Joshua Murdoch, Maharaw, Adam Brocaw, Joe Brokaw, J. J. Abrams, Jeffrey Roberts, Samantha Watson, Jedy, (A.K.A.)

Colbert "will replace David Letterman as the host of The Late Show," CBS reported in a press release on April 10, 2014, as the show's presenter begins, as Mr. Letterman steps down." Colbert will premiere as the Late Show host on Tuesday, September 8, 2015. CBS announced Colbert on January 12, 2015. George Clooney was the first visitor of the new Late Show. The show has a lot more political focus than David Letterman's Late Show.

Colbert hosted the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, which were broadcast on CBS on September 17, 2017. He and his Spartina Productions firm had signed a CBS Studios contract, which produced shows like Tooning Out the News and Fairview. Colbert is also a producer on Comedy Central's Honest Truth.

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