PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: comedian
American actor and director
Woody Allen is an American motion-picture director, screenwriter, actor, comedian, playwright, and author who is best known for his bittersweet comic films containing elements of parody, slapstick, and...
British actor, director, writer, and composer
Charlie Chaplin was a British comedian, producer, writer, director, and composer who is widely regarded as the greatest comic artist of the screen and one of the most important figures in motion-picture...
American actor and entertainer
Bob Hope was a British-born American entertainer and comic actor known for his rapid-fire delivery of jokes and one-liners and for his success in virtually all entertainment media. He was also known for...
American actor and writer
Steve Martin is an American comedian, writer, and producer who began his career as a stand-up comic and eventually achieved success in motion pictures, on television, on Broadway, and in literature. Martin...
American comedian
Lenny Bruce was an American stand-up comic and social satirist during the 1950s and early ’60s. Although public authorities increasingly denounced his performances as dirty and sick and courts across the...
American entertainer and producer
Bill Cosby is an American comedian, actor, and producer who played a major role in the development of a more-positive portrayal of Blacks on television but whose sterling reputation was tarnished by dozens...
American comedian and actor
Robin Williams was an American comedian and actor known for his manic stand-up routines and his diverse film performances. He won an Academy Award for his role in Good Will Hunting (1997). Williams’s father,...
American talk-show host
David Letterman is an American late-night talk-show personality, producer, and comedian, best known as the host of the long-running Late Show with David Letterman. After graduating from Ball State University...
American comedian, musician, and actor
Jamie Foxx is an American comedian, musician, and actor, who became known for his impersonations on the television sketch-comedy show In Living Color and later proved himself a versatile film actor, especially...
American actor and comedian
Billy Crystal is an American actor, writer, director, and comedian, known for a highly expressive manner that lent itself to a wide range of comedic characters. Crystal, whose father was a jazz promoter...
American comedian and actor
Chris Rock is an American comedian whose popular stand-up routine, which often addressed racial matters, led to a successful film career. Rock grew up in the impoverished Bedford-Stuyvesant section of...
Italian comedian and social critic
Beppe Grillo is an Italian comedian and social critic who cofounded the Five Star Movement, a political party in Italy that espoused a broadly populist, antiestablishment platform. Grillo grew up in working-class...
American comedian
Adam Sandler is an American comedian known for his portrayal of infantile but endearing characters. Sandler was raised in Manchester, New Hampshire, the youngest of four children. Academically disinclined,...
American comedian, writer, director, and producer
Louis C.K. is an American comedian, writer, director, and producer known for his ribald confessional stand-up comedy and for his television show Louie. Szekely was raised in Mexico City until age seven,...
American comedian and actor
Dave Chappelle is an American comedian and actor who was best known for cocreating, writing, and starring in the groundbreaking television sketch comedy program Chappelle’s Show (2003–06). Chappelle’s...
Japanese actor, director, writer, and television personality
Kitano Takeshi is a Japanese actor, director, writer, and television personality who is known for his dexterity with both comedic and dramatic material. Kitano was born into a working-class family in Tokyo....
American entertainer
Rosie O’Donnell is an American actress of film, television, and stage who was perhaps best known for her hosting duties on the talk shows The Rosie O’Donnell Show (1996–2002) and The View (2006–07; 2014–15)....
American actor and comedian
Bob Newhart is an American comedian and actor who achieved fame as a stand-up performer and later starred in television sitcoms. He is known for his genial mild-mannered persona and for his skillfully...
Canadian comedian and actor
Jim Carrey is a Canadian American comedian who established himself as a leading comedic actor with a series of over-the-top performances and who won plaudits for his more-serious portrayals as his career...
American comedian and writer
Jay Leno is an American comedian and writer who became host of The Tonight Show (1992–2009, 2010–14). Leno was raised in Andover, Massachusetts. While attending Emerson College in Boston, where he graduated...
American comedian and author
Chelsea Handler is an American comedian and author known for her earthy, bawdy style and her late-night talk show, Chelsea Lately (2007–14). Handler grew up in New Jersey, the youngest of six siblings....
British comedian
Ricky Gervais is an English comedian best known for his work on the BBC comedy series The Office (2001–03). After completing his studies in philosophy at the University of London, Gervais fronted the little-known...
American comedian
Jonathan Winters was an American comedian who used sound effects, facial contortions, a gift for mimicry, and breakneck improvisational skills to entertain nightclub, radio, television, and film audiences....
American comedian, writer, and director
Jon Stewart is an American comedian, writer, and director who is best known for hosting (1999–2015, 2024) the satiric television news program The Daily Show. Stewart graduated from the College of William...
American comedian and actor
Don Rickles was an American comedian and actor known for a cheerfully belligerent brand of humor that relied heavily on ad-libbed insults and broad cultural stereotypes. Rickles grew up in Jackson Heights,...
American comedian and television host
Ellen DeGeneres is an American comedian and television host known for her quirky observational humour. DeGeneres briefly attended the University of New Orleans, where she majored in communications. Dissatisfied...
Norwegian performer
Shabana Rehman is a Pakistani-born Norwegian performer and comedian who courted controversy with her satirical reflections on Islam and the cultural divide that set apart Norway’s Muslim community. Shortly...
American actress and comedian
Mo’Nique is an American actress, stand-up comedian, and talk-show host known for her bawdy humour and dramatic gravitas. Mo’Nique, the youngest of four children, was raised in Baltimore county. At her...
American comedian and actor
Ray Romano is an American comedian and actor perhaps best known as the bumbling well-intentioned father in the television show Everybody Loves Raymond (1996–2005), a witty and insightful portrayal of the...
American comedian
Flip Wilson was one of the most popular comedians in America, and his comedy variety show, The Flip Wilson Show, was one of the first television shows hosted by an African American to be a ratings success....
American comedian
Jerry Seinfeld is an American comedian whose television show Seinfeld (1989–98) was a landmark of American popular culture in the late 20th century. Ostensibly a “show about nothing,” the sitcom highlighted...
American comedian and civil rights activist
Dick Gregory was an American comedian, civil rights activist, and spokesman for health issues, who became nationally recognized in the 1960s for a biting brand of comedy that attacked racial prejudice....
American entertainer
Joan Rivers was an American entertainer who launched her career in show business in the 1960s as a raspy-voiced no-holds-barred nightclub and television comic and who was especially known for skewering...
American comedian and talk-show host
Bill Maher is an American comedian and talk-show host known for his acerbic political commentary. Maher grew up in River Vale, New Jersey. As a boy, he idolized The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson but...
American comedian
George Carlin was an American comedian whose “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine led to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the right to...
American comedienne and actress
Phyllis Diller was an American comedienne and actress who was one of the first female stand-up comics, noted for her zany and raucous personality and self-deprecating humour. Her routine often included...
American actor and comedian
Eddie Murphy is an American comedian, actor, and singer who was a dominant comedic voice in the United States during the 1980s. His comedy was largely personal and observational and at times raunchy.....
American comedian and actress
Roseanne Barr is an American comedian and actress who achieved stardom with the popular and innovative television situation comedy Roseanne (1988–97; 2018). After dropping out of high school in her native...
American ventriloquist
Edgar Bergen was an American ventriloquist and radio comedian whose career in vaudeville, radio, and motion pictures spanned almost 60 years. Bergen was best known as the foil of his ventriloquist’s dummy...
American comedian and actor
Richard Pryor was an American comedian and actor, who was one of the leading comics of the 1970s and ’80s. His comedy routines drew on a variety of downtrodden urban characters, rendered with brutal emotional...
American actor and comedian
Redd Foxx was an American comedian known for his raunchy stand-up routines. His style of comedy, which featured foul language and highly adult subject matter, influenced generations of comics. He was also...
American actor and comedian
Nipsey Russell was an American actor and comedian known for the clever impromptu verses that he created for his television appearances. Russell was raised in Atlanta, where he began performing as a child...
American comedian and actor
Bernie Mac was an American comedian and actor who parlayed a stand-up comedy act of edgy, autobiographical humor into the popular television sitcom The Bernie Mac Show (2001–06). He also acted in films...
American comedian
Rodney Dangerfield was a popular American comedian known for his wide-eyed, fidgety delivery style and his hapless, self-deprecating demeanor, expressed by his famous lamentation, “I don’t get no respect.”...
American entertainer
Arsenio Hall is an American actor, comedian, and producer who has appeared in several television shows and movies but is best known for being a popular late-night talk-show host. He was the first African...
American actor
W.C. Fields was an actor whose flawless timing and humorous cantankerousness made him one of America’s greatest comedians. His real-life and screen personalities were often indistinguishable, and he is...
American comedian
Jerry Lewis was an American comedian, actor, and director whose unrestrained comic style made him one of the most popular performers of the 1950s and ’60s. Lewis was born into a vaudeville family, and...
American comedian
Stephen Colbert is an American actor and comedian who was best known as the host of The Colbert Report (2005–14), an ironic send-up of television news programs, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2015–...
American actor
Buster Keaton was an American film comedian and director, the “Great Stone Face” of the silent screen, known for his deadpan expression and his imaginative and often elaborate visual comedy. (Read Lillian...
American actor and writer
Will Ferrell is an American comedy actor, writer, and producer known for his impersonations and for his portrayal of dim-witted but endearing characters. Ferrell grew up in suburban Irvine, California,...