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Name: Jim Gaffigan
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Date of Birth:
July 07, 1966
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Place of Birth:
Chesterton, Indiana, USA
Mini-bio:
The Indiana-born standup comic Jim Gaffigan cultivated a reputation during the late '90s and early 2000s as a low-key, witty, and inventive comic with mildly self-deprecative routines. He then branche... read mored out into television and film roles, finding mixed (if not unqualified) success in those venues. Launched during the early '90s, Gaffigan's original standup act sparked the attention of such after-hours talk programs as Late Night with David Letterman (on CBS) and Late Night with Conan O'Brien (on NBC). Both shows booked the comic for repeated spots to tremendous audience enthusiasm. Letterman was reportedly so wowed by Gaffigan's material, delivery, and presence, in fact, that he commissioned his company, Worldwide Pants Incorporated, to produce a sitcom for Gaffigan, Welcome to New York. The series cast Gaffigan as a character named Jim Gaffigan, a former weatherman from Indiana who moves to New York and takes a job on a Good Morning America-like local talk show called "AM New York." Christine Baranski co-starred as Gaffigan's caustic producer, Marsha Bickner, Roseanne's Sara Gilbert as Marsha's assistant, Amy, and Rocky Carroll as Adrian Spencer, the program's smarmy, artificial host. Many of the initial gags and bits revolved around the "fish out of water" concept of a Hoosier thrust into the Big Apple, and Gaffigan's co-workers' cutting objections to his presence in the newsroom. Unfortunately, Welcome to New York folded a few months in, thanks to markedly poor ratings and viewership. The comic continued his television work unabated, however, with a recurring role on the equally short-lived Ellen DeGeneres starrer The Ellen Show. Beginning in 1999, Gaffigan began signing for supporting roles, typically comic turns, in feature films, starting with David O. Russell's Three Kings. He played Larry Johnson, the highway pullover dumbfounded by a "meow"-spouting cop, in Broken Lizard's Super Troopers (2001), then a hotel manager in the eccentric dramedy Igby Goes Down (2002). Gaffigan also landed a bit part as Chris Grandy in Gary Winick's Big update 13 Going on 30 (2004). In mid-2005, Gaffigan issued his premier comedy video, Jim Gaffigan: Beyond the Pale -- an hour-long special in which the comic delivers a number of riffs on the subjects of food, holidays, gift giving, and religion. (The title refers to the fair-haired Gaffigan's ghostly white complexion, one of the recurring subjects of his shtick.) Gaffigan then essayed a supporting role in Hilary Brougher's 2006 psychodrama Stephanie Daley, starring Tilda Swinton, Amber Tamblyn and Timothy Hutton. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
Jim Gaffigan mini-bio: Indiana native Jim Gaffigan arrived in New York City, New York in 1990 at the age of 24. Officially he had relocated to work in advertising, but his real fascination with New York had a lot more to do with pursuing his dream of making people laugh as an actor and stand-up comic, a dream he would eventually realize through hard work and ample talent. Hailing from a clan of conservative Midwestern bankers, young Gaffigan had virtually no contacts or connections in the entertainment industry. In a 2006 interview for The Onion's AV Club, Gaffigan told journalist and film critic Noel Murray he came from a "a conservative family where you're driven by security, and wearing a tie to work is considered success. My uncle was the first one to go to college, and at that point we'd been in this country for 150 years. It took us five generations to get to the middle class, and I was like, "Hey, I think I'm gonna go into the entertainment world!" Everybody was like, "Are you nuts?" Gaffigan proved his comic merit and steadily climbed the ladder to stand-up success, eventually landing an appearance on fellow Hoosier David Letterman's talk show "The Late Show with David Letterman". The gap-toothed late night yukmeister was so impressed by Gaffigan's first appearance that he hand-picked Gaffigan to develop a sitcom for the Letterman-owned production company World Wide Pants. The fruit of this union, a sitcom entitled "Welcome to New York", was canceled shortly into its run, despite critical acclaim. Fortunately, the melanin-challenged stand-up artiste's career was very far from over. He went on to guest star on a veritable who's who list of hit shows including "That 70s Show", "Sex and the City", "Third Watch", "Ed" and "Law and Order". According to the aforementioned Noel Murray, the demise of "Welcome to New York" also had a cathartic effect on Gaffigan's stand-up routine. "His observational humor lost a lot of its initial peevishness, and it now relies on his hyper-awareness of his own mundanity, expressed in an 'inner voice' that comments on his act throughout the show." wrote Murray in early 2006, referring to Gaffigan's signature habit of reading his audience's mind in a gut-bustingly tremulous falsetto. Whatever the future holds for Mr. Gaffigan, all fans of good and original comedy are just happy that he is alive and well and making us pee our pants.
