Biography
Comedian Stephen Colbert was born in 1964 in South Carolina and studied philosophy at the all-men's private liberal arts school Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. Moving to Chicago to study theater at Northwestern, he got involved at Second City, where he met fellow comedians
Amy Sedaris and
Paul Dinello. The three of them moved to New York to create the sketch comedy show Exit 57, originally aired on Comedy Central. As a writer for
The Dana Carvey Show, Colbert got the chance to write for
Saturday Night Live for several seasons. While working on
SNL, he met up with animator
Robert Smigel and provided voices for TV Funhouse's "The Ambiguously Gay Duo" (along with the voice of Steve Carrell). Colbert has also provided voices on the puppet show
Crank Yankers and the Cartoon Network series Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.
Colbert is probably best known as a senior correspondent for
The Daily Show on Comedy Central. He joined the show in 1997 when Craig Kilborn was still the host and held on when
Jon Stewart took over in 1999. That same year, Colbert teamed with Sedaris and Dinello to create
Strangers With Candy, an after-school special parody of sorts on Comedy Central. In addition to writing and producing, Colbert starred as history teacher Mr. Noblet. The team also collaborated on a book called Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not published by Hyperion. Projects for 2004 include Strangers With Candy: The Movie. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide