Trivia: Comedic actress Nora Dunn has frequently played acerbic character roles in films and TV as foils to generally likeable leads. She was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1990, when she left due to the controversial episode with musical guest Sinead O'Connor and host Andrew Dice Clay. During her five-year run, she played several talk show hosts and was one of the Sweeney Sisters, along with Jan Hooks. She made her film debut in Mike Nichols' Working Girl (1988) as a jaded office worker, followed by Savage Steve Holland's How I Got Into College (1989) as an SAT coach. Her next few films were less successful: Stepping Out, Born Yesterday, and I Love Trouble. She turned back to TV and joined the cast of the NBC drama Sisters as the lesbian TV producer Norma Lear, followed by the CBS comedy The Nanny as Dr. Reynolds. In the late '90s, she had a few small yet funny roles in the more successful films The Last Supper, Bulworth, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and Three Kings. She also used her vocal talent to provide voices for the animated TV shows Futurama, The Wild Thornberrys, and Histeria! In 2001, she played the mom in Max Keeble's Big Move, a fashion designer in Zoolander, and Miss Madness in Heartbreakers. Her 2003 projects include the independent comedy Die Mommie Die, the Jim Carrey feature Bruce Almighty, and the romantic comedy Laws of Attraction.

Trivia: Looking more like the CEO of a law firm than a comedian, Canadian actor Phil Hartman has had a successful career playing against his physical appearance with an off-kilter sense of humor. He entered show business as a graphics designer; among his better-known artistic renderings was the official logo for the rock group Crosby, Stills and Nash. In the early '80s, Hartman was a member of a comedy troupe called the Groundlings, where he made the acquaintance of comedian Paul Reubens. In collaboration with Reubens, Hartman helped create the character of child/man Pee-wee Herman, cowriting the screenplay of Reubens' 1985 movie vehicle Pee-wee's Big Adventure and portraying the grimy Kap'n Karl on the Saturday-morning TV series Pee-wee's Playhouse (1986-90). When asked later on if he was bitter over the way Reubens grabbed all the glory for the Pee-wee concept, Hartman characteristically made a self-deprecating joke, though it was decidedly at Reubens' expense. Before signing with NBC's Saturday Night Live, Hartman appeared as part of a comedy ensemble on the 1985 summer replacement series Our Time. Hartman's greatest comic strength lay in his celebrity impersonations, which he trotted out to maximum effect on both SNL and the Fox cartoon series The Simpsons. Hartman claimed that he had 99 celeb voices in his manifest, including a deadly funny impersonation of President Bill Clinton, which became an audience favorite on SNL and Jay Leno's Tonight Show where he often made guest appearances. Hartman remained with Saturday Night Live from 1986 through 1994, sharing a 1989 Emmy for "outstanding writing;" at the time he left the show (making pointed comments about the deteriorated quality of the writing staff), Hartman had set a record for the largest number of appearances (153) as an SNL regular. In 1995, Phil Hartman began a weekly assignment in the role of a pompous, self-centered (much like Ted Knight's character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show) anchorman on the network sitcom Newsradio. When not appearing on the series, Hartman was a successful TVcommercial voiceover artist and pitchman and also occasionally acted in feature films, including Blind Date (1987), Jingle All the Way (1996) and The Second Civil War (1997). In his personal life, Hartman was totally unlike the characters he usually played and was loved and respected for his humbleness, his affability and his generosity; he frequently donated his time to charities. It was therefore a terrible shock when on May 28, 1998, he was shot to death while sleeping in the bedroom of his Encino, California home. His wife Brynn Hartman committed the murder and then shot herself shortly after police removed the couple's two small children from the premises. Later reports stated that despite putting on a good public face as a couple, the two had been trying for years to resolve their difficulties and that drug and alcohol use on the part of Brynn were a factor in the tragedy.

Trivia: Born in Georgia, comedian Jan Hooks perfected her exaggerated Southern accent and carved a niche for herself satirizing the eccentric wives of prominent politicians and public figures. After making her film debut as Tina, the Alamo tour guide in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live. Starting in 1986, she created over-the-top characterizations for Nancy Reagan, Kitty Dukakis, Ivana Trump, Tammy Faye Bakker, and Hillary Clinton. She left the show in 1991 and put her Southern accent permanently on display for Designing Women as Carlene, the naïve sister of Charlene (Jean Smart). Movie roles were usually small yet quirky, like the image consultant in Batman Returns or the driving student in Coneheads. In 1994, she joined a team of hard-working comedians at the The Martin Short Show, who she would later work with on the Comedy Central program Primetime Glick. She was ideal for the role of Dixie Glick, the wife of the 300-pound celebrity talk show host Jiminy Glick (Martin Short). While making regular appearances as Vicki Dubcek on 3rd Rock From the Sun and as Apu's wife Manjula on The Simpsons, she reprised her role of Dixie Glick for the feature-length movie La La Wood in 2003. In 2010, she played Jenna Maroney's mother on 30 Rock. Hooks passed away in 2014, at age 57.

Trivia: Squeaky-voiced comedienne Victoria Jackson is perhaps best known for being a cast member of the NBC television sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1986 to 1992, but she also makes sporadic film appearances. Jackson made her film debut in Stoogemania (1985). Born in Miami, FL, Jackson was raised in a strict Christian home. Her father was a gymnastics coach and Jackson was trained in the sport from age five through 18. Following studies at Florida Bible College, Jackson attended Furman University on a gymnastics scholarship. She next went to Auburn University before getting involved with summerstock theater in California. With the troupe, she ended up in Alabama where she met actor Johnny Crawford (best known as the star of the TV Western The Rifleman). He hired her for his nightclub act. From there, Jackson went to Hollywood working odd jobs while launching her career as a standup comic. Jackson's big break came from an appearance with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in which she recited poetry while doing a handstand. The funny lady went on to appear a total of 22 times on the enduring nighttime talk show. Following her long stint on SNL, Jackson married her old high school flame and returned to Florida to raise a family. Since then her film and television appearances, on shows such as The Naked Truth, have been sporadic, though Jackson did find time to record a children's album, Ukulele Lady, on Choo Choo Records. Herself a devout Christian, Jackson also occasionally appears on The 700 Club to share her faith.

Trivia: Jon Lovitz is a versatile comedic actor instantly recognizable for his distinctive voice, acerbic wit, pear-shaped body, and hangdog eyes. He studied at the University of California, Irvine, and participated in the Film Actors Workshop. He then went on to do guest spots on TV and had a recurring role on Foley Square. Lovitz also played small roles in Last Resort (1986), and Ratboy (1986), and also provided a voice for the animated feature The Brave Little Toaster (1987). He got his first real break as a regular on TV's Saturday Night Live, where his characters such as Tommy Flanagan of pathological Liars Anonymous, the great Shakespearean ham Master Thespian, and the Devil himself became quite popular. His stint on Saturday Night Live put him in demand as a character actor and television guest star. His friendship with director Penny Marshall helped him get roles in some of her earlier films such as Big (1988), and his role as the fast talking baseball recruiter Ernie "Cappy" Capadino in Marshall's A League of Their Own (1992) earned him widespread acclaim. Lovitz has also appeared as a guest voice on the TV animated show The Simpsons and played lead voice in the critically-acclaimed animated show The Critic on ABC and the Fox Network.In the years following SNL and The Critic, Lovitz remained active with comedic roles in film (High School High, Little Nicky) and television (NewsRadio, Las Vegas), though it his performances in such films as Todd Solandz's acerbic black comedy Happiness and opposite Kevin Spacey in the semi-comedic Jack Abramoff biopic Casino Jack that displayed more range most filmmakers had previously failed to capitalize on. And thought the comic actor was never known to be overtly political, his scathing criticisms of U.S. President Barack Obama on the issue of taxes made headlines across the country in 2012, resulting in an unusually serious appearance on FOX News in which he passionately defended his comments.

Trivia: First big break was writing and performing humorous essays on a local Pittsburgh show, PM Magazine, in the early 1980s. Appeared on Star Search, where he lost to Sinbad. Younger brother Jimmy has managed the careers of several major comedians, including Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell and Gary Shandling. His two sons are named for Holden Caulfield, the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye, and legendary actor Marlon Brando. Penned a series of books based on his signature stream-of-consciousness-style monologues, starting with 1997's Rants. Mocked the annual Presidential address on Comedy Central's State of the Union: Undressed, but then sat in the House gallery as a guest of President Bush for the 2004 State of the Union. Launched his own radio program, The Dennis Miller Show, for Westwood One radio network in March of 2007. In 2008, became a spokesperson for USA Cares, a nonprofit organization that provides financial assistance to military families. Appears periodically as a commentator on Fox News political talk shows.

Trivia: With his dry wit and popular characters a mainstay of Saturday Night Live for his enduring, record-setting nine-year stint (1986-1995) on the equally enduring late-night comedy television staple, Kevin Nealon shattered the public's funny bone with such popular characterizations as Subliminal Man and over-muscled meathead Hanz (alongside Dana Carvey's Franz) in addition to his popular stint as anchorman for that series' satirical news segment, Weekend Update. Aside from Tim Meadows, Nealon holds the record for longest-running cast member to appear in consecutive seasons in the show's long-running existence. Born and raised in Bridgeport, CT, Nealon took interest in sports and art in high school, gaining early attention as a performer in numerous local garage bands. Later attending Sacred Heart University and graduating with a degree in marketing, Nealon traveled the U.S. and Europe after completing his education. Capping his worldly exploits with a series of odd jobs, Nealon began performing as a standup comedian in the late '70s while working as a bartender at the Hollywood's Improv. Attempting to elevate his standup career to the next level, Nealon began making appearances on television commercials and talk shows. Joining the Not Ready for Primetime players in the 1986 season, the funnyman quickly shot to the front of the line with his likeable, smirky persona and memorable character creations, and he remained a member of the cast for nearly a decade. In addition to his Saturday Night Live duties, Nealon also began appearing in bit roles in such features as Roxanne (1987), All I Want for Christmas (1991), and, later, Happy Gillmore (1996). A curiosity among SNL alumni in that he didn't attempt a starring vehicle based on any characters he created for the show, Nealon instead opted for transferring his unique dry humor to the silver screen without lugging excess SNL baggage along for the ride. Upon his departure from SNL in 1996, it seemed as if Nealon may have finally been ready for prime time. Joining the cast of Champs that same year proved a disappointment as the show was canceled after less than one season, but Nealon persisted and has since gone on to appear in several of his SNL cast mates' features including Adam Sandler's Little Nicky (2000) and David Spade's Joe Dirt (2001). In addition to his comedy career, Nealon is a dedicated and outspoken champion of animal rights through his association with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).He went on to appear in Master of Disguise, Anger Management, and Daddy Day Care before landing the part of Doug Wilson on the Showtime series Weeds, a show he stayed on for multiple seasons. During that time, he continued to appear in major motion pictures that usually starred other SNL alumni. Highlights include You Don't Mess With the Zohan and Just Go With It. He voiced the main character on the short-lived animated series Glenn Martin, DDS.

Trivia: A well-known humorist renowned for his quick wit and sharp sense of political and social satire, A. Whitney Brown is a familiar face to many television viewers due to his performances on Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. A former street busker who would captivate audiences with his trained dog and juggling skills, Brown gained a following in 1976 when he performed against such comedy heavyweights as Robin Williams and Dana Carvey at the San Francisco Comedy Competition. He married Cynthia Swanson that same year, and the following decade found Brown gaining even more exposure when he joined the Saturday Night Live writing staff in 1985. Joining the cast the following year, Brown stayed with the show until 1991, appearing in the interactive motion picture I'm Your Man the following year. Brown offered his writing skills to the short-lived Comedy Central series Exit 57 in 1995, and the next year he began his two-year stint as a correspondent for the popular news satire series The Daily Show, which aired on the same network. In addition to his work in film and television, Brown is also the author of the book The Big Picture: An American Commentary.

Trivia: Comedy writer, author, and occasional actor Al Franken was one of the first alumni of the NBC network sketch comedy institution Saturday Night Live (1975) and spent most of his career closely associated with the series and its byproducts. He is also the author of the best-selling book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. On television, he starred in the NBC sitcom Lateline (1997-1999).Franken started out as a standup comedian in high school. While attending Harvard, he attempted to get onto the staff of the Harvard Lampoon but was rejected. Later, he teamed up with his former high school classmate Tom Davis and toured the country as a standup comedy duo. They were spotted by Canadian producer Lorne Michaels, who at the time was trying to put together a Monty Pythonesque sketch comedy show for American audiences. He hired them in 1975, as both writers and performers. As writers, Franken and Davis distinguished themselves with their outrageously funny sketches. Franken's recurring segment "Al Franken Decade" was one of his popular creations. They remained with the show until Lorne Michaels departed in 1980. The unemployed duo penned many comedy screenplays together, but most went unproduced. One More Saturday Night (1986) was an exception, but it bombed at the box office. Not long after that, Franken and Davis returned to Saturday Night Live. Around this time, Franken created one of his most memorable and enduring characters, Stuart Smalley, an unlicensed 12-step therapist. A quiet, gentle man whose motto was "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me," Smalley hosted a show in which guests would come on to share their problems and learn to feel better about themselves. Later, Franken later expanded the recurring sketch into the feature film Stuart Saves His Family (1995). Franken then hit the jackpot with his scathing written attack on Limbaugh and other rightwing radicals. The success of the book helped Franken land his own sitcom, Lateline. In 2004 he was the first star to sign on as host of a program on the nascent Air America Radio, and four years later he won the 2008 U.S. Senate seat for Minnesota in a disputed race.

Trivia: As the son of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara Ben Stiller's decision to establish himself as a comic writer and actor surprised almost no one.Born in New York City on November 30, 1965, Stiller began to shoot his own comic films from the age of ten. After high-school graduation, Stiller attended UCLA and landed bit parts in several features, notably the Steven Spielberg-directed, Tom Stoppard and Menno Meyjes-scripted, late 1987 opus Empire of the Sun.Meanwhile, Stiller continued to turn out comedy shorts, including the 30-minute Elvis Stories (1989), a spoof of obsessive Elvis fans featuring an already-established John Cusack. One of Stiller's shorts, a Tom Cruise parody called The Hustler of Money, won him a spot as a writer and player on Saturday Night Live in 1989. His stint on the show was short-lived, but led to his own eponymous series, The Ben Stiller Show, first on MTV (1990) and later on Fox (1992-1993). The program failed to draw a substantial audience, and folded within a couple of months on each network, but Stiller netted an Emmy for comedy writing in 1993.The following year, Stiller debuted as a feature film director with the twentysomething angst romcom Reality Bites (1994), in which he also starred alongside Winona Ryder and a memorably grungy Ethan Hawke. The film was a relative critical and commercial success and scored with Gen-Xers; unfortunately, Stiller's next directorial effort, 1996's The Cable Guy failed to register with critics and audiences. After a small part as nursing-home orderly Hal in the Adam Sandler comedy Happy Gilmore (1996), Stiller rebounded with a starring role in David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster (1996). The relatively positive reception afforded to that comedy helped to balance out the relative failure of Stiller's other film that year, If Lucy Fell. It was not until two years later, however, that Stiller truly stepped into the limelight. Thanks to starring roles in three wildly, wickedly different films, he emerged as an actor of versatility, equally adept at playing sensitive nice guys and malevolent hellraisers. In the smash gross-out comedy There's Something About Mary (1998), Stiller appeared as the former type, making comic history for outrageous sight gags that involved misplaced bodily fluids and mangled genitalia. That same summer, Stiller did time as a gleefully adulterous theatrical instructor in Neil LaBute's jet-black evisceration of contemporary sexual mores, Your Friends and Neighbors. Finally, Stiller starred in the intensely graphic and disturbing addiction drama Permanent Midnight, earning critical acclaim for his portrayal of writer-cum-heroin addict Jerry Stahl -- a personal friend of the Stiller family from Stahl's days scripting the TV series ALF. Now fully capable of holding his own in Hollywood, with the license to prove it, Stiller starred alongside William H. Macy, Paul Reubens, Hank Azaria, and pal Janeane Garofalo in the fantasy comedy Mystery Men (1999) as the leader of a group of unconventional superheroes. Stiller also landed a supporting role in The Suburbans, a comedy about the former members of a defunct new wave band. The following year, Stiller starred as a rabbi smitten with the same woman as his best friend, a Catholic priest (Edward Norton), in the well-received romantic comedy Keeping the Faith (2000), which Norton also co-produced and directed. Stiller found his widest audience up to that point, however, with the Jay Roach-directed madcap comedy Meet the Parents. As the tale of a nutty father-in-law to be (Robert De Niro) who wreaks unchecked havoc on his daughter's intended (Stiller) via covert CIA operations and incessant interrogation, this disastrously humorous tale of electrical interference gone wild scored with ticket-buyers and qualified as the top box-office draw during the holiday season of 2000.In the autumn of 2001, Stiller brought one of his most popular MTV Video Music Awards incarnations to the big screen in the outrageously silly male-model comedy Zoolander, in which he successfully teamed with (real-life friend) Owen Wilson to carry stupidity to new heights.In 2001 Stiller once again teamed with Wes Anderson collaborator Wilson for the widely praised comedy drama The Royal Tenenbaums. Cast as the estranged son of eccentric parents who returns home, Stiller infused his unmistakable comic touch with an affecting sense of drama that found him holding his ground opposite such dramatic heavies as Gene Hackman and Anjelica Huston. Though his work in 2002 offered little more than a few cameo performances and some vocal contributions to various animated children's shows, the busy comedic actor returned to the big screen for the 2003 comedy Duplex, directed by Danny DeVito. Though the film pairs Stiller and Hollywood bombshell Drew Barrymore as a couple willing to go to horrific extremes to land the much-desired eponymous living space, reviews were unkind and the comedy died a quick death at the box office. Stiller's next film -- the romantic comedy Along Came Polly -- fared considerably better on a fiscal level, but suffered from an implausible premise.Spring 2004 promised a rebound when the electrifying duo of Stiller and Owen Wilson returned to the big screen with director Todd Phillips' celluloid recycling job Starsky & Hutch. Though Stiller and Wilson seemed the ideal pair for such a conceptually rich re-imagining of 1970s television, and the film boasted wonderful villainous turns by rapper Snoop Dogg and Vince Vaughn, reviews were once again lackluster and the film struggled to find an audience. Yet Starsky & Hutch did actually reap a profit, which (in a business sense) placed it miles ahead of Stiller's next film. Released a mere two months after Starsky & Hutch, the Barry Levinson comedy Envy sports a wacky premise; it explores the comic rivalry that erupts between two longtime friends and neighbors when one invents a product that makes dog excrement disappear. It also boasts a marvelous cast, replete with Stiller, the maniacal Jack Black, and the brilliant Christopher Walken. But for whatever reason (speculated by some as the film's inability to exploit the invention at the story's center) the film's sense of humor failed to catch fire and Envy died a quick box-office death. Stiller fared better with the ribald, anarchic summer 2004 comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, starring himself, Vince Vaughn, and Rip Torn. For the following two years, Stiller once again contented himself largely with bit parts (2004's Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2006's Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny) until the Christmas 2006 release A Night at the Museum. In this effects-heavy fantasy, adapted from the popular children's book by Milan Trenc, Stiller plays Larry Daley, the new night watchman at New York City's Museum of Natural History, who discovers that the exhibits all spring to life after hours, from a giant skeletal Tyrannosaurus Rex to a waxen Teddy Roosevelt -- and seem content to hold Larry hostage. The effort split critical opinion, but shot up to become one of the top three box-office draws during the holiday season of 2006.Meanwhile, Stiller signed on to team with the Farrelly brothers for The Heartbreak Kid (2007), a remake of the 1972 Elaine May comedy of the same title; he also produced Blades of Glory, a comedy with Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as rival figure-skating champions vying with one another for Olympic gold. He wrote, directed and starred in the hit comedy Tropic Thunder (2008) as a moronic Hollywood actor toplining a war film, voiced Alex in the same year's animated picture Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and in 2009, reprised his Larry Daley role for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Stiller's emphasis on sequels then continued with 2010's Little Fockers and 2012's Madagascar 3. In 2013, Stiller picked up the role originally made famous by Danny Kaye, as the lead in the remake The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which Stiller also directed and produced. The following year, he appeared in the next film in the Night at the Museum series, Secret of the Tomb.

Trivia: Emmy-winning comic actor Mike Myers seemed destined by fate to link up with Saturday Night Live; when he made his television debut as a commercial actor at age eight, his co-star (playing his mother) was pre-SNL Gilda Radner. Working steadily in his native Canada, Myers was a member of Toronto's Second City troupe, the star of his own TV series Mullarkey and Myers at age 20, and the vee-jay of an all-night Canadian music video show in 1987. In all of these career stepping stones, Myers continued testing out the comic characterizations which would win him fame in his SNL days. His most popular character (which he'd been doing at parties since high school) was spacey teenage couch potato Wayne Campbell, who, with equally airheaded best friend Garth Algar (Dana Carvey), hosted the Aurora, IL, cable-access series Wayne's World. This SNL skit begat a popular like-titled film in 1992, and a less popular 1993 sequel. Despite the tepid response to Wayne's World 2, Mike Myers as Wayne seemed to be more readily acceptable to film fans than Mike Myers as anyone else, as shown by the disappointing 1993 comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer.