James Thomas
"Jimmy
" Fallon, Jr.
(born September 19, 1974) is an American comedian, actor, musician, and talk show host known for his work on Saturday Night Live
. He currently hosts NBC's late night talk show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
.
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JIMMY FALLON TICKETS
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Early life
Childhood
Fallon is an Irish-American who was born in
Camden, New York, the son of Gloria and James Thomas Fallon, Sr.,
[1] who was a Vietnam veteran.
[2] His family later settled in
Saugerties, New York, while his father worked at
IBM in nearby Kingston.
[3] As a child, he and his sister, Gloria, would reenact the "clean parts" of
Saturday Night Live
that his parents had taped for him.
[4] Fallon was such a fan of
Saturday Night Live
that he made a weekly event of watching it in his dormitory during college. Fallon has also been a long time fan of Bob Saget.
In his teens he impressed his parents with different impersonations, the first being of
James Cagney.
[5] [6] He was also musically inclined, and started playing guitar at age 13. He would go on to mix comedy and music in contests and shows.
Education
Fallon attended St. Mary of the Snow, a
Roman Catholic parochial school, and Saugerties High School. He graduated in 1992 and attended
The College of Saint Rose in
Albany, New York. He was a
Computer Science major, but switched to
Communications in his senior year, dropping out 15 credits shy of a degree.
[7] "I was a Computer Science major. I got out once it got really hard. I made it up to
C++. Then I couldn't do the math — it got really confusing. I switched to Communications, which is a ridiculous major — let's be honest," he recalls.
[8] On Saturday May 9, 2009, Fallon received a BA in Communications from The College of Saint Rose (Albany, NY) after presenting college officials with his impressive portfolio, which satisfied all requisites for his degree. In addition to
, Fallon spoke at the school's 86th commencement. That night, on
Saturday Night Live
he held up his degree during the closing of the show. He had made an appearance as the character Barry Gibb with host Justin Timberlake. On
Twitter he publicly displayed
. Additionally, he showed excerpts from the ceremony on his late night show May 11, 2009.
Career
Stand-up
Fallon gives credit to
troll dolls for his big break. He was given a troll doll with a graduation cap in his senior year of high school. His mother heard about an impression contest at
Bananas
comedy club in Poughkeepsie, NY. Fallon came up with a stand-up routine that was a commercial for troll dolls. He would impersonate various celebrities auditioning to be the spokesperson. He became the winner of the contest and after college he began to do stand-up tours across the country. When he was in Los Angeles, he took improv classes with
The Groundlings.
Early work
Fallon appeared in the feature film
The Scheme
(originally entitled
The Entrepreneurs
). His one line in
Father's Day
was cut but he can still be seen in the background. In 1998 Fallon appeared briefly on the show
Spin City
in the second season as a man selling photographs. By late 1998, Fallon was studying at the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles, making $7.50 a set at
The Improv Theater, when he was summoned to New York to audition for the long-running late night
sketch comedy show,
Saturday Night Live
. Fallon did his impersonations of
Jerry Seinfeld,
[9] French Stewart,
Pat O'Brien,
Chris Rock,
Hilary Swank,
Gilbert Gottfried, and
Adam Sandler, many of which drew laughter from producer
Lorne Michaels. Fallon also did musical impersonations of
Eddie Vedder of
Pearl Jam,
Adam Duritz of
Counting Crows,
Alanis Morissette, and
Robert Smith of
The Cure.
.
Saturday Night Live
Fallon's impersonations helped land him on
Saturday Night Live
as a featured player in the 1998-1999 season,
[10] and he was promoted to full cast member in the summer of 1999.
Among his signature bits were his song parodies, which he performed when
Colin Quinn was doing
Update
and continued to showcase on special occasions after he had replaced him. He became co-anchor of
Weekend Update
with
Tina Fey with the October 7, 2000 season premiere.
[11] Fallon left
SNL
in 2004 and began pursuing a film career.
Recurring characters
- Dave, a young man in the Will Ferrell/Rachel Dratch recurring sketch, "The Lovers", often used as a pawn in Roger and Virginia's matchmaking.
- Jarret (from Jarret's Room), a stoner who hosts his own Internet webcam show.
- Jeffrey's clerk, one of the clerks (the other being a male host for the show) of an upscale department store.
- Joey Mack, an obnoxious radio DJ who mocks his celebrity guests.
- Kip Bloder, brother to Chris Parnell's Wade Bloder.
- The Leather Man, an intense man who owns a shop filled with leather clothes.
- Nick Burns, a sarcastic tech support representative who helps office workers with computer problems (and is almost always exposed as not knowing as much as he should by one of the workers). He frequently used the catchphrase "Moooooove!" when ousting people from their desk so he could fix the problem.
- Pat Sullivan, nicknamed "Sully", one of the Boston Teens, boyfriend of Rachel Dratch's "Zazu" character.
- Patrick Fitzwilliam, a surly Irishman who hosts a show called Top O' The Morning with his friend, William Fitzpatrick (played by Seth Meyers)
- Randy Goldman, from "Wake Up Wakefield", Megan's (Maya Rudolph) crush who doesn't know she exists.
- Rodney "The Zipper" Calzoun, the MC at the Rialto Grande
- Señor Guadalupe Ramirez, one of the guitar players on the recurring sketch, "The 'How Do You Say, Ah, Yes' Show"
- Wade, one of the members of the boy band 7 Degrees Celsius
- Barry Gibb, in the skit called "The Barry Gibb Talk Show", he hosts along with his brother Robin Gibb (played by Justin Timberlake).
- Carson Daly, whom he impersonated with the catch phrase "I am a massive tool." [12]
Other work
thumb, April 2007
Fallon has appeared in
Taxi
,
Anything Else
,
Almost Famous
,
Fever Pitch
,
Band of Brothers
,
Doogal
and
Factory Girl
. He occasionally does stand up comedy at the Comedy Club in New York City.
In 2002, Fallon released the comedy album
The Bathroom Wall
. In a mixed review, Rolling Stone praised the album's songs, calling the album the "second-best Prince parody ever, after Beck's 'Debra'." However the magazine panned the album's comedy routines, ultimately giving it two-out-of-five stars.
[13] The album was nominated for a Grammy in 2003 for Best Spoken Comedy Album. Fallon co-hosted the
2001 MTV Movie Awards with
Kirsten Dunst on June 7, 2001.
[14] Fallon has played
Neo in
Sex and the Matrix
, a comedic two-in-one parody of
Sex and the City
and
The Matrix
.
[15] He hosted the
2002 MTV Video Music Awards alone that year.
[16] His opening number included parodies of videos by
Eminem,
Avril Lavigne,
Nelly,
The White Stripes,
Dave Matthews and
Enrique Iglesias.
Fallon also hosted the
2005 MTV Movie Awards and played
Anakin Skywalker in comedic parody of ''
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Siths Mustafar scene, in which Anakin and Padme have their last conversation. Fallon was named one of
People'' magazine's
50 Most Beautiful People in 2002, an honor Fallon found embarrassing.
[17]
Following the
Boston Red Sox's
World Series clinching game over the
St. Louis Cardinals in 2004, Fallon ran onto the field at
Busch Stadium with
Drew Barrymore to film a scene for their movie
Fever Pitch
.
In 2006, Fallon starred in "Spontaneous Combustion", a
Traktor-directed
Pepsi television commercial with actress
Parker Posey. In the ad, Fallon and Posey can be seen dancing and jumping around to the song
Streamline
by Newton. In October of that year, Fallon appeared on stage in
The Secret Policeman's Ball, a charity gig filmed to raise awareness of
Amnesty International at the
Royal Albert Hall. Fallon made three appearances during the show, the first in a sketch in which he performed impressions of people such as
David Bowie,
Jerry Seinfeld and
David Blaine in order to get past a
doorman (
Shaun Williamson) who claims Fallon isn't on the list. The doorman finally recognizes him for his role in
Taxi
, but still won't let him in. He later masqueraded as
Russell Brand before being led off by Williamson, and made one final appearance in a cameo role as the front of a
pantomime horse in the
Al Murray "pub landlord" routine.
In 2007, Fallon wrote the song "
Car Wash for Peace" and donated all proceeds to charity. He performed the song on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
and
The View
and dedicated a
MySpace page to the cause. Around the same time, a video circulated on various Internet sites called lonelyfallon32, in which Fallon parodied YouTube celebrity Jessica Rose (a.k.a.
lonelygirl15) and later performed the song.
Fallon, along with his sister Gloria, wrote
I Hate This Place: The Pessimist's Guide to Life
for TV Books in 1999. A second book is anticipated but has not yet been released, to be titled "I Hate This Place 2: Tokyo Drift."
Fallon has also written a children's book, illustrated by Adam Stower, entitled
Snowball Fight
.
Fallon also appeared on
Diggnation's 185th show as the program's first-ever guest.
[18]
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Fallon succeeded fellow
Saturday Night Live
alumnus
Conan O'Brien as the host of
NBC's
Late Night
after O'Brien left the show to prepare to take over
The Tonight Show
from
Jay Leno in 2009.
[19] The deal for the long-expected succession was confirmed April 24, 2008, with an made on May 12, 2008 at NBC's
upfront presentation.
[20] [21] The official press conference was released on
Hulu.com.
[22]
The show titled
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
, first aired on March 2, 2009 with guests
Justin Timberlake,
Robert De Niro, and musical guest
Van Morrison. Guests on the show's first week included
Tina Fey,
Jon Bon Jovi,
Cameron Diaz,
Donald Trump and
Drew Barrymore. On the June 18, 2009 show (right after the monologue), Jimmy asked fans to send tweets to request musical guests. The following weekend, requests for Joe Cameron were leading the votes. Joe Cameron successfully secured a performance on
The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2007, after a video grassroots campaign went viral, making him the first unsigned artist to perform on her show.
Personal life
Fallon married
Drew Barrymore's producing partner
Nancy Juvonen on December 22, 2007.
[23] [24] On January 27, 2009 Fallon underwent
LASIK laser eye surgery at
Lenox Hill Hospital in
Manhattan. He chronicles the entire surgery on his . Fallon says, "...it works, LASIK's is great and the surgery turned out to be great."
[25] On May 9, 2009 Fallon received a college degree from
The College of Saint Rose in
Albany, New York. He dropped out 14 years previously. His degree from St. Rose was in communications which he showed off on
SNL
and his late night show.
[26]
Television
- Spin City: The Marrying Men
(1998), uncredited
- Saturday Night Live
(1998-2004)
- SNL Fanatic
(2000)
- Sex and the Matrix
(2000)
- Band of Brothers
(2001)
- Night of Too Many Stars: An Overbooked Event for Autism Education
(2006)
- Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
(2009)
- Family Guy
(2009)
Filmography
- Whip It!
(2009) (post-production) [27]
- The Year of Getting to Know Us
(2008)
- Factory Girl
(2006)
- Arthur and the Invisibles
(2006) (voice)
- Doogal
(2006) (voice)
- Fever Pitch
(2005)
- Taxi
(2004/I)
- The Entrepreneurs
(2003)
- Anything Else
(2003)
- Almost Famous
(2000)
Discography
Albums
Singles