Jerry Seinfeld

Jerome Allen Seinfeld was born on April 29, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York City, to a Jewish family. His father, Kalmen Seinfeld, was a sign painter from Brooklyn who collected jokes he heard while serving in World War II. His mother, Betty Hosni, came from a Syrian Jewish family from Aleppo. Seinfeld grew up in Massapequa on Long Island, attended Massapequa High School, and at 16 spent time volunteering in Kibbutz Sa’ar in Israel.

Seinfeld’s path into comedy began in college, after brief stints in productions sparked his interest in stand-up. He attended the State University of New York at Oswego, then transferred to Queens College of the City University of New York in Flushing, graduating in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and theater. While still at Queens College, he appeared at open-mic nights at Budd Friedman’s Improv Club. After graduation, he tried out at Catch a Rising Star in New York City, which led to an appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special.

In the early 1980s, Seinfeld moved from club work to television. He had a small recurring role on the sitcom Benson as Frankie, a mail-delivery boy with comedy routines no one wanted to hear, but was abruptly fired because of creative differences. In January 1981 he performed on An Evening at the Improv, and in May he appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. That appearance impressed Carson and the audience, bringing Seinfeld frequent appearances on that show and others, including Late Night with David Letterman. His first one-hour special, Stand-Up Confidential, aired live on HBO in 1987.

Seinfeld became best known for the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, which he co-created and wrote with Larry David after first developing it as The Seinfeld Chronicles in 1988. The series ran from 1989 to 1998, with Seinfeld playing a fictionalized version of himself. By its third season it had become the most watched sitcom on American television, and its final episode aired in 1998. NBC offered Seinfeld $110 million, a record $5 million per episode, for a 22-episode tenth season, but he declined. He was the only actor to appear in every episode, alongside Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, and Jason Alexander.

After ending the sitcom, Seinfeld returned to New York City and to stand-up rather than staying in Los Angeles to further an acting career. He recorded I’m Telling You for the Last Time in 1998, and the making of new material was chronicled in the 2002 documentary Comedian. His later work includes the reality series The Marriage Ref, the web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, the animated film Bee Movie, and the Netflix comedy Unfrosted. He has written SeinLanguage, the children’s book Halloween, and Is This Anything?.

Seinfeld’s comedy has long been rooted in observation: the small habits, social rules, and everyday irritations that many people recognize at once. His training in communications and theater, his years in New York comedy clubs, and even a family background that included a father who collected jokes all fed that plainspoken attention to timing and detail. He has received a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Actor Awards, three Webby Awards, and four Grammy Award nominations. His words still carry because they begin so often with ordinary life, then turn it just enough for people to laugh at what they already knew.