Trivia: Chris Elliott may have been born with a funny spoon in his mouth -- he's the son of Bob Elliott, the more deadpan half of the famous comedy duo Bob and Ray -- but he's developed his own offbeat brand of humor and gained his own substantial cult following. Elliott began his show business career as a standup comic, but he first gained public attention as a writer and performer on Late Night With David Letterman, helping that show define a new age of ironic comedy, and winning two Emmys as part of Letterman's writing team. Elliott played the sarcastic firebrand to Letterman's perturbable Midwestern reserve. He starred in sketches as the Panicky Guy, the Fugitive Guy, and the Guy Under the Seats, a character who lived in a cramped passageway underneath the audience, and would occasionally interrupt the show to chat with Letterman. As a result of Elliott's growing popularity on Late Night, his acting career took off. Or, to be more precise, he got bit parts in Michael Mann's Manhunter, James Cameron's The Abyss, and the Francis Ford Coppola segment of New York Stories. Elliott also went on to star in two hilarious, but little-seen half-hour comedy shows for Cinemax. FDR -- A One Man Show featured Elliott playing Chris Elliott, a pompous egomaniacal actor portraying FDR in a one-man show of tremendous historical inaccuracy, while Action Family economically combined satire of TV police dramas with a satire of a typical living room family sitcom. Around this time, Elliott published a Mommy Dearest-style mock exposé about his childhood, Daddy's Boy: A Son's Shocking Account of Life With a Famous Father, which featured chapter-by-chapter rebuttals from his father, Bob, and a foreword by David Letterman.In 1990, Elliott, with help from talented collaborators like David Mirkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Adam Resnick, starred in a bizarrely funny sitcom, Get a Life. The character Elliott played, Chris Peterson, a 30-year-old paperboy, was not a far cry from his previous television personae. Peterson was a dimwitted, balding, doughy, sarcastic, celebrity-worshipping dolt, with a hilariously high degree of self-regard. He was an utter failure who somehow convinced himself he was doing great. Bob Elliott played Chris Peterson's father on the show. The mucky mucks at the fledgling Fox network didn't understand the show, and were hoping Peterson would be cuddlier. Elliott would later remember a network exec optimistically comparing the character to "Tom Hanks in Big." The show had disastrous ratings. Despite support from savvier TV critics, Fox gave up on the show quickly, and canceled Get a Life after two seasons. The show had gained a passionate cult following and some episodes were eventually released on DVD and syndicated briefly on the USA Network. Get a Life was later recognized for its influence on other, more successful programs, including The Simpsons and South Park.Elliott also had key supporting roles in the smash hit Groundhog Day, opposite Bill Murray, and in the unsuccessful rap mockumentary CB4 with Chris Rock. In 1994, he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live. Despite the addition of other talented comic actors (Randy Quaid, Michael McKean, and Janeane Garofalo), it was a dismal season, and Elliott was put off by the lack of collaborative spirit among some of the long-term cast members. He moved on after one season.This was also the period of Elliott's greatest professional disappointment -- the failure of the feature film he co-wrote and starred in, Cabin Boy. His frequent collaborator Adam Resnick co-wrote the film, and, at the urging of producer Tim Burton, also directed it. Letterman makes a brief, but very funny cameo appearance. The film has developed a small cult following, particularly among devotees of Get a Life, but it was a box-office flop. While the filmmakers themselves have acknowledged that Cabin Boy fell short of their expectations, Elliott was stung by the viciousness of the reviews. Elliott went through a creative dry spell after this, appearing in a recurring role in the Tea Leoni sitcom Flying Blind, and gaining more national visibility as a spokesman for Tostitos snack chips. He also continued making guest appearances on a variety of sitcoms. Since then, Elliott has appeared in supporting roles in a number of silly comedies (Snow Day, sequels to The Nutty Professor, and Scary Movie) and has developed a fruitful relationship with the Farrelly brothers, appearing in Kingpin, Osmosis Jones, and, most notably, in their smash hit, There's Something About Mary. He was also heard as the voice of Dogbert on the short-lived animated series, Dilbert, and he was a regular on the appropriately named, ill-fated Steven Weber series, Cursed.

Trivia: Rotund, blonde, and amazingly agile comic actor Chris Farley boasted an energetic, bumbling presence that made him among the few alumni from the long-running Saturday Night Live television series to find a comfortable niche in feature films. He started out working with the Ark Improv theater group after graduating from Marquette University with a degree in theater and communications. After leaving the Ark, he worked at the Improv Olympic Theater where he studied under director Del Close. From there Farley found work at the Second City Theater where he was discovered by SNL producer Lorne Michaels. The portly actor debuted on the series in 1990, and, with such goofy characters as loud motivational speaker Matt Foley (who lived in a van down by the river), quickly became one of the show's favorite players. He remained with the show through the 1994-1995 season and then left to pursue a movie career. Farley made his feature film debut as a security guard in Wayne's World (1992); he had a much larger role in the sequel, Wayne's World 2 (1990). Farley had his first screen hit when he teamed up with fellow SNL actor David Spade and appeared in the sophomoric Tommy Boy, in which Farley played the naïve and socially incompetent son of a recently deceased auto parts manufacturer. Farley then returned to supporting roles before reteaming with Spade again for Black Sheep in 1996. In 1997, he starred in the comedy Beverly Hills Ninja. Farley's manic comedy style has frequently been compared to that of the late John Belushi, whom Farley idolized. Like Belushi, Farley's offscreen life was punctuated by frequent bouts of alcohol and drug abuse; friends and colleagues were concerned as was Farley, but he apparently was unable to stop. On December 18, 1997, Farley was found dead of an apparent heart attack in his luxurious Chicago apartment. He was only 33 years old, the same age as Belushi when he died.

Trivia: Actress, comedian, and paragon of cynicism Janeane Garofalo was born on September 28, 1964, in Newton, NJ. During high school, her family relocated to Houston, TX, where the trauma of the move prompted her famously insecure, self-loathing persona to begin blossoming in full. While studying history at Providence College, Garofalo entered a comedy talent search sponsored by the Showtime cable network, winning the title of "Funniest Person in Rhode Island." Dreaming of earning a slot on the writing staff of the Late Night With David Letterman program, she became a professional standup upon graduating college but struggled for a number of years, working briefly as a bike messenger in Boston. Upon moving to the Los Angeles area, Garofalo met actor/comedian Ben Stiller, who in 1992 invited her to join the cast of his short-lived but acclaimed Fox television sketch comedy program The Ben Stiller Show. A stint on Garry Shandling's breakthrough HBO series The Larry Sanders Show (for which she was nominated for an Emmy award in 1996) soon followed, and in 1994 Garofalo reunited with Stiller in the film comedy Reality Bites, a role which earned her the much-despised tag of "Generation X comedian." That fall, she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live but exited before the conclusion of the season, publicly disheartened by the show's increasing drop-off in quality.After signing on as a correspondent on Michael Moore's news magazine TV Nation and hosting Comedy Product, a standup showcase on the Comedy Central cable network, Garofalo began work on her breakthrough role, co-starring with Uma Thurman in the 1996 romantic comedy hit The Truth About Cats and Dogs. That same year, she also co-starred with Bill Murray in Larger Than Life, and appeared briefly in The Cable Guy and Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy. Garofalo's prolific output continued in 1997; in addition to starring roles in two comedies, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion and The Matchmaker, she was featured prominently in James Mangold's Cop Land and Paul Schrader's Touch, she hosted the MTV series Indie Outing, and she remained a fixture of the emerging alternative comedy circuit. In 1998, Garofalo's career continued to thrive, with starring and supporting roles in a number of films. Some of her more notable work included Clay Pigeons, a black comedy with Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix; Permanent Midnight, which marked another collaboration with Stiller; and the animated Kiki's Delivery Service, which featured Garofalo as the voice of a new age artist and mystic. She also acted against type as one half of a revoltingly cheerful couple in Bruce McCulloch's comedy Dog Park. The following year, Garofalo appeared in no less than five films, with a supporting part in the ensemble piece 200 Cigarettes, a starring role as an unconventional action heroine called the Bowler in Mystery Men (which also featured Stiller), and prominent turns in Kevin Smith's eagerly awaited Dogma, Hampton Fancher's psychological thriller The Minus Man, and the satirical comedy Can't Stop Dancing, in which she acted alongside fellow comedienne Margaret Cho.In 2001, Garofolo took on the role of Catherine Connolly in The Laramie Project, HBO's docudrama chronicling the aftermath of the death of Matthew Shepard, and filmmaker David Wain's comedy Wet Hot American Summer. The actress joined the cast of Pixar's Ratatouille in 2007 to voice the role of Colette, a talented French chef, and appeared on television shows including Two and a Half Men, 24, and Criminal Minds.

Trivia: One of the longest-running cast member in the history of Saturday Night Live, easygoing funnyman Tim Meadows crafted some of the series' most enduring characters in his nine-year stint on the popular late-night comedy staple. Whether sipping Courvoisier as self-proclaimed Ladies' Man Leon Phelps or posing clueless questions to irritable guests as early morning talk show host Lionel Osborne, Meadows and his memorable collection of characters endured even during the more critically panned years of SNL and proved an important component of keeping the show on its feet during those dark days. Born in Highland Park, MI, and raised in Detroit, Meadows studied radio and television broadcasting at Wayne State University before performing improvisational comedy at the Soup Kitchen Saloon in nearby Ferndale. Quickly finding his stride on-stage, Meadows relocated to Chicago where he would join the ImprovOlympia team and later become associated with the Second City troupe. Gaining a loyal following during his three-year stint with the legendary comedy troupe, Meadows was soon courted by SNL producer Lorne Michaels and in 1991, he achieved the dreams of comics nationwide when he joined the SNL cast as a featured player. Nominated for an Emmy the same month he made the transition to cast member status two years later, Meadows was fired from the show in 1994 only to be hired back at the insistence of Michaels. Although he did little film or television work during his SNL years, Meadows prepared for his own departure from the series by appearing in the features of such former cast members as Dan Aykroyd (Coneheads [1993]), Mike Myers and Dana Carvey (Wayne's World 2 [also 1993]), and Julia Sweeney (It's Pat [1994]). Predictably, Meadows' segue into his post-SNL career began with the quickly dismissed Ladies Man feature, though he continued to grace the small screen with roles in such sitcoms as The Michael Richards Show and Leap of Faith.As the 2000's continued, Meadows began to carve out a niche for himself with memorable and funny supporting roles in a variety of comedies like The Even Stevens Movie, The Benchwarmers, and, quite notably, as the Carpal Tunnel suffering high school principle in 2004's Mean Girls. In 2007, he appeared as fictional rock star Dewey Cox's drummer in the musical biopic parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. He appeared in the 2008 Will Ferrell vehicle Semi-Pro, the 2011 Adam Sandler project Jack and Jill, and took a leading part in the sequel Mean Girls 2.

Trivia: One of the most endearing goofballs to ever grace the stages of Saturday Night Live, affectionately offensive funnyman Adam Sandler has often been cited as the writer/performer who almost single-handedly rescued the long-running late-night television staple when the chips were down and it appeared to have run its course. Though his polarizing antics have divided audiences and critics who often dismiss him as lowbrow and obnoxious, Sandler's films, as well as the films of his Happy Madison production company, have performed consistently well at the box office despite harsh and frequent critical lashings.Born in Brooklyn on September 9th, 1966, it may come as no surprise that Sandler was a shameless class clown who left his classmates in stitches and his teachers with a handful. Never considering to utilize his gift of humor to pursue a career, Sandler eventually realized his potential when at the age of 17 his brother encouraged him to take the stage at an amateur comedy competition. A natural at making the audience laugh, the aspiring comedian nurtured his talents while attending New York University and studying for a Fine Arts Degree. With early appearances on The Cosby Show and the MTV game show Remote Control providing the increasingly busy Sandler with a loyal following, an early feature role coincided with his "discovery" by SNL cast member Dennis Miller at an L.A. comedy club. As the unfortunately named Shecky Moskowitz, his role as a struggling comedian in Going Overboard (1989) served as an interesting parallel to his actual career trajectory but did little to display his true comic talents.It wasn't until SNL producers took Miller's praise to heart and hired the fledgling comic as writer on the program that Sandler's talents were truly set to shine. Frequent appearances as Opera Man and Canteen Boy soon elevated him to player status, and it wasn't long before Sandler was the toast of the SNL cast in the mid-'90s. While appearing in SNL and sharpening his feature skills in such efforts as Shakes the Clown (1991) and Coneheads (1993), Sandler signed a recording contract with Warner Bros., and the release of the Grammy-nominated They're All Gonna Laugh at You proved the most appropriate title imaginable as his career began to soar. Striking an odd balance between tasteless vulgarity and innocent charm, the album found Sandler gaining footing as an artist independent of the SNL universe and fueled his desire -- as numerous cast members had before him -- to strike out on his own. Though those who had attempted a departure for feature fame in the past had met with decidedly mixed results, Sandler's loyal and devoted fan base proved strong supporters of such early solo feature efforts as Billy Madison (1996) and, especially, Happy Gilmore (1996).His mixture of grandma-loving sweetness and pure, unfiltered comedic rage continued with his role as a slow-witted backwoods mama's boy turned football superstar in The Waterboy (1998), and that same year found Sandler expanding his persona to more sensitive territory in The Wedding Singer. Perhaps his most appealing character up to that point, The Wedding Singer's combination of '80s nostalgia and a warmer, more personable persona found increasing support among those who had previously distanced themselves from his polarizing performances. As the decade rolled on, Sandler also appeared in the action-oriented Bulletproof (1996) and the even more affectionate Big Daddy (1999). In 2002, Sandler starred in a re-imagining of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, titled simply Mr. Deeds.Beginning in the late nineties, Sandler's Happy Madison production company launched such efforts as Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), Little Nicky (2000), The Animal and Joe Dirt (both 2001). Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo appeared in (2005), and Grandma's Boy in (2006). Despite critical castigation for scraping the bottom of the barrel with these efforts, Sandler's commercial instinct remained intact; the films all hit big at the box office and drew an ever-loyal base of fans who gravitated to any feature with Sandler's name attached.The early 2000s also saw Sandler attempting to branch out in a number of unusual directions, which included the animated "Hanukkah Musical" 8 Crazy Nights (2002). Sandler also began dipping his toes into the realm of drama with a starring role in the eccentric, critically acclaimed tragicomedy Punch-Drunk Love (2002), directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Sandler also starred in the Jim Brooks-helmed comedy/drama Spanglish (2004), an unsually subdued and gentle turn away from the irascible types that Sandler usually played. The critical receptions were, again uneven, as reviewers loathed 8 Crazy Nights, justifiably praised Punch-Drunk across the board, and espoused mixed feelings about Spanglish.Perhaps well aware of the extent of these risks that he was taking with his career, Sandler continued to sustain his popularity with a steady (and reliable) stream of crowd-pleasing star vehicles throughout the early 2000s. 2002's self-produced Sandler vehicle Anger Management (which teamed him up with a maniacal Jack Nicholson); the 2004 effort 50 First Dates, in which he co-starred with fellow Wedding Singer alum Drew Barrymore; and the 2005 remake of Robert Aldrich's The Longest Yard all made box office gold. In 2006, Sandler starred in yet another hit: Click, a surrealistic comedy directed by Frank Coraci, co-starring Sean Astin, Kate Beckinsale and Christopher Walken. The film was a big hit and, having spent the past few years playing it safe, Sandler decided it was a good time to take another chance. He signed on to star with Don Cheadle in the 2007 drama Reign Over Me, playing a man who lost his wife and children in the 9/11 attacks, and is headed for complete self-destruction. The critics weren't as enamored with this dramatic attempt as they were with Punch-Drunk Love, but Sandler was mostly well received even when the film wasn't. Always tempering his risks with more predictable career moves, the actor next signed on to appear alongside King of Queens star Kevin James in the buddy movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, a comedy about two straight firefighters who pretend to be a gay couple to receive domestic partner benefits.On a seemingly never-ending roll with his broadly appealing comedic roles, Sandler next played an Israeli secret agent and skilled beautician in 2008's You Don't Mess with the Zohan. He followed this up with a turn in the kids comedy Bedtime Stories in 2009, before adding a dash of dramatic acting to a humorous role once more, with the 2009 Judd Apatow flick Funny People. For Sandler's next project, he reteamed with Cuck and Larry co-star Kevin James for the 2010 romp Grown Ups, before cozying up to Jennifer Aniston for the romantic comedy Just Go With It in 2011. Despite his beautiful co-star, Just Go With It did poorly at the box office, and so for his next movie, the funnyman chose a more bankable supporting actor: himself, playing both a man and his own annoying twin sister in the 2012 comedy Jack and Jill.