Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( ; born May 13, 1964) is an American comedian, writer, producer, liberal political commentator, actor, and television host. He is best known for hosting the Comedy Central news satire show The Colbert Report from 2005 to 2014, and the CBS late-night talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2026.
The son of immunologist James William Colbert Jr., Colbert was raised a Catholic in South Carolina. He originally studied to be a dramatic actor, but became interested in improvisational theater while attending Northwestern University, where he met Second City director Del Close. Colbert first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago. Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, comedians with whom he developed the sketch comedy series Exit 57, were in his troupe. Colbert performed on The Dana Carvey Show (1996) and wrote for the show, before collaborating again with Sedaris and Dinello on the sitcom Strangers with Candy (1999–2000).
Colbert's work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show gained him wide recognition. In 2005, he left The Daily Show to host The Colbert Report. Following The Daily Shows news-parody concept, The Colbert Report was a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows including The O'Reilly Factor, in which he portrayed a caricatured version of conservative political pundits. In the first episode, he introduced the neologism truthiness, which was named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society and Merriam Webster. It earned him an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2006, which he did in character. This event led to the series becoming one of Comedy Central's highest-rated series. In 2010, he and Jon Stewart headlined the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. In 2011, he started the satirical Colbert Super PAC, which was credited with raising awareness of campaign finance issues. After ending The Colbert Report, he was hired in 2015 to succeed David Letterman, who was retiring as host of the Late Show on CBS. Colbert hosted the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards in September 2017.
Colbert has won eleven Primetime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and three Peabody Awards. Colbert was named one of Times 100 Most Influential People in 2006 and 2012. His book I Am America (And So Can You!) was listed No.1 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2007.
Early life and education Stephen Tyrone Colbert was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of eleven children (James III, Edward, Mary, William, Margo, Thomas, Jay, Elizabeth, Paul, and Peter) in a Catholic family. He lived for a few years in Bethesda, Maryland.King, Larry. "Interview with Stephen Colbert". Larry King Live. CNN. October 14, 2007. Next, he grew up in James Island, an island and a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina. His father, James William Colbert Jr., was an immunologist and medical school dean at Yale University, Saint Louis University, and at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. From 1969, James Colbert Jr. was the school's first vice president of academic affairs. Colbert's mother, Lorna Elizabeth Colbert (née Tuck), was a homemaker.
In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as devout people who nevertheless strongly valued intellectualism, and taught their children that it was possible to question the Church and still be Catholic. Via the Internet Archive. He has said his father was interested in French humanist writers including Léon Bloy and Jacques Maritain, while his mother was fond of Catholic Worker Movement leader Dorothy Day. Regardless, Colbert recalls having a "pretty conservative upbringing", with his mother voting for a Democrat exactly once in her life (John F. Kennedy). In an interview, his mother has described him as "rambunctious". As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television; to avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors, particularly John Chancellor.
Colbert sometimes jokingly claims that his surname is French, but in reality his ancestry is fifteen-sixteenths Irish (one of his paternal great-great-grandmothers was of German and English descent). Many of his ancestors emigrated from Ireland to North America in the 19th century before and during the Great Famine."Faces of America: Stephen Colbert" , PBS, Faces of America series, with Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2010)."Pedigree of Stephen Colbert" , AncestorTree.net. Retrieved August 29, 2010. Originally, his surname was pronounced in English; Colbert's father, James, wanted to pronounce the name , but maintained the pronunciation out of respect for his own father. He offered his children the option to pronounce the name whichever way they preferred. Colbert started using later in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Colbert's brother Edward, an intellectual-property attorney, retained ; this was shown in a February 12, 2009, appearance on The Colbert Report, when his second-oldest brother asked him, " or ?" Ed responded "", to which he jokingly replied, "See you in Hell."
On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and his brothers Paul and Peter, who were closest to him in age, died in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were en route to enroll Paul and Peter at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. He has discussed the impact the tragedy has on him and his philosophy of grief and suffering. Lorna Colbert moved the family from James Island to the George Chisolm House, in downtown Charleston, and she ran the carriage house as a bed and breakfast.
Colbert found the transition difficult and did not easily make friends in the new neighborhood. Later he described himself during this time as being detached, lacking a sense of importance regarding the things with which other children concerned themselves. "Nothing made any sense after my father and my brothers died. I kind of just shut off," he recalled. He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, a pastime which he later characterized as an early experience in acting and improvisation.
Colbert attended Porter-Gaud School, an Episcopal school in Charleston, participating in several school plays and contributing to the school newspaper, but he was not highly motivated academically. During his adolescence, he briefly fronted A Shot in the Dark, a Rolling Stones cover band. When he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a severely perforated eardrum caused him inner-ear damage severe enough to preclude a career involving scuba diving, and leaving him deaf in his right ear.
For a while, he was uncertain whether he would attend college, but eventually he applied and was accepted to Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia, where a friend had also enrolled. Arriving in 1982, he majored in philosophy and continued to participate in plays.Neil DeGrasse Tyson Interviews Stephen Colbert, Late Show (posted to YouTube on November 27, 2018) Quote:"When I was first in college I was a philosophy major..." Quote:"He studied philosophy in college."Quote:"Philosophy is what I took most classes in." He found the curriculum to be rigorous, but was more focused than he had been in high school and was able to apply himself to his studies. He developed an appreciation for stoicism, and the writings of Marcus Aurelius, jokingly claiming that "[I] was a stoic before it was cool". Despite the lack of a significant theater community at Hampden–Sydney, Colbert's interest in acting escalated during this time. After two years, he transferred in 1984 to Northwestern University as a theater major to study performance, emboldened by the realization that he loved performing, even when no one was coming to shows. He graduated from Northwestern's School of Communication in 1986. While at Northwestern, he was in an improv group with David Schwimmer called the No Fun Mud Piranhas. At age 21, Colbert auditioned and was subsequently accepted for the graduate drama program at New York University, but ended up declining to act in Chicago.
Early career in comedy
While at Northwestern, Colbert studied with the intent of becoming a dramatic actor; mostly he performed in experimental plays and was uninterested in comedy. He began performing improvisation while in college, both in the campus improv team No Fun Mud Piranhas and at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago as a part of Del Close's ImprovOlympic at a time when the project was focused on competitive, long-form improvisation, rather than improvisational comedy. "I wasn't gonna do Second City", Colbert later recalled, "because those Annoyance people looked down on Second City because they thought it wasn't pure improv – there was a slightly snobby, mystical quality to the Annoyance people". After Colbert graduated in 1986, however, he was in need of a job. He was accepted for an internship at Late Night with David Letterman, which he rejected because it was unpaid. A friend who was employed at Second City's box office offered him work answering phones and selling souvenirs. Colbert accepted and discovered that Second City employees were entitled to take classes at their training center free of charge. Despite his earlier aversion to the comedy group, he signed up for improvisation classes and enjoyed the experience greatly.
Shortly thereafter, he was hired to perform with Second City's touring company, initially as an understudy for Steve Carell. It was there he met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, with whom he often collaborated later in his career. By their retelling, the three comedians did not get along at first – Dinello thought Colbert was uptight, pretentious and cold, while Colbert thought of Dinello as "an illiterate thug" – but the trio became close friends while touring together, discovering that they shared a similar comic sensibility.
Robert Smigel, initially looking for Carell, scouted Colbert at Second City and became "obsessed" with working with him. Smigel tried to get him hired at Saturday Night Live, for which Colbert unsuccessfully auditioned, in 1992. A year later, Smigel, then head writer at Late Night with Conan O'Brien, wanted to get him involved in the show either as writer or performer, but after Colbert had a meeting with O'Brien, the host did not think there was a place for him. When Sedaris and Dinello were offered the opportunity to create a television series for HBO Downtown Productions, Colbert left Second City and relocated to New York to work with them on the sketch comedy show Exit 57. The series debuted on Comedy Central in 1995 and aired through 1996. Although it lasted only 12 episodes, the show received favorable reviews and was nominated for five CableACE Awards in 1995, in categories including best writing, performance, and comedy series.
Television career The Dana Carvey Show (1996)