Stephen Colbert

Comedian / TV Personality

Stephen Colbert hosts cable TV's The Colbert Report, the nightly comedy spin-off of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. A veteran of Chicago's Second City improvisational troupe, Colbert has been a TV comedian and writer since the mid-1990s, when he was a writer and performer for the cable sketch comedy Exit 57 (1995-96). He joined The Daily Show in 1997 and while making occasional appearances as a "correspondent" he also worked as a writer and actor for the series Strangers with Candy (1999-2000, with Amy Sedaris). As The Daily Show became more political, Colbert developed the character he later took to The Colbert Report, that of a conservative political pundit along the lines of Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. Since 2005 The Colbert Report has dryly satirized American politics, with Colbert in character as an ill-informed blowhard who values "truthiness" (that which feels like the truth).

Extra credit: Colbert is a 1986 graduate of Northwestern University... He worked on the short-lived Dana Carvey series The Dana Carvey Show Sponsored by Pepsi (1996), where he and Steve Carell provided the voices for the Robert Smigel cartoons "The Ambiguously Gay Duo," later seen on Saturday Night Live (Colbert was "Ace")... Colbert made headlines in October of 2007 when he announced his intention to run for president of the United States; the gag ran its course by early November... Though his family name was pronounced "COL-bert," he has adopted the pronunciation "col-BAIR."