Background

Stephen Colbert was born on May 13, 1964, in Washington, D.C., the United States, to Lorna and James William Colbert, Jr. He was the youngest of the eleven siblings, James, Edward, Mary, William, Margo, Thomas, Jay, Elizabeth, Paul, Peter, and Stephen. Lorna was a homemaker while James was a doctor and medical school dean at Yale University, and later Washington University and the vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Colbert and his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he spent the rest of his childhood and teenage years. His father and two of his brothers died in a plane crash when he was ten years old. On September 11, 1974, they were on an Eastern Airlines DC-9 that crashed in dense fog during its approach to Charlotte, NC. Of the 82 people on board, 72 were killed.

Education

Colbert was somewhat of a loner growing up. He didn't care much about grades. His rebellion came in the form of obsessively reading books. Growing up in Charleston, Colbert's interest in acting was sparked by parts in several school plays. It helped that he grew up in a home full of singing and dancing. His actress mother, Lorna, taught him how to do stage falls by pretending to faint on the kitchen floor.

Colbert found a way to express himself through acting, which he did in several school plays at Charleston's Episcopal Porter-Gaud School. He later enrolled at Hampden-Sydney College of Virginia with the intention of becoming a philosophy major, but it wasn’t long before he reconsidered and transferred to Northwestern University, enrolling as a theater major. Colbert graduated with a degree in 1986.

Career

After graduating in 1986, Colbert took a job in the offices of the Second City improv group in Chicago. After two years, he was performing for the famed troupe. While traveling with Second City, Colbert met Amy Sedaris, and the two created a Comedy Central sketch show called Strangers With Candy, which poked fun at after-school specials.

Colbert then worked as a cast member and writer for The Dana Carvey Show, along with Steve Carell, Robert Smigel, and Dino Stamatopoulos, but the series was canceled as the satire was distasteful. He also freelanced as a writer on Saturday Night Live. Seeking more exposure and money, Colbert took a job as a correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America.

Working for Good Morning America, only one of his humorous correspondent segments was aired but he got hired by Madeline Smithberg, the producer of The Daily Show on a trial basis in 1997. For eight years he was a correspondent and writer on the news parody, where he became a fan favorite for such segments as This Week in God, a look at religious issues in the news, and Even Stephen, a mock debate between Colbert and fellow correspondent Steve Carell.

He, along with Sedaris and Dinello worked on a new comedy serial, Strangers with Candy, for Comedy Central. Characterized as a cult show, its 32 episodes were aired between 1999 and 2000. In 2005 Colbert became the host of his own spin-off show, The Colbert Report, and took on the guise of a self-important conservative commentator, a persona meant to parody certain cable-news personalities, most notably Bill O’Reilly.

During his first show, Colbert coined the word truthiness to express a kind of unchanging "truth" derived from a gut feeling rather than from any known facts. (Truthiness was named the Word of the Year in 2005 by the American Dialect Society.) The neologism became the organizing principle for the show, where Colbert’s rants about political and cultural issues and his expressions of personal idiosyncrasies (such as an unyielding hatred of bears) were treated with the same amount of seriousness.

Six months after The Colbert Report debuted, Colbert appeared as the featured speaker at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. With President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush just a few feet away, Colbert proceeded to give an off-color tirade that left the audience silent and had the critics divided - some praised him and others said he had crossed the line into disrespect. The controversy only ignited his popularity, though, and The Colbert Report became a Comedy Central powerhouse, winning several Emmys, including 2013 and 2014 awards for Outstanding Variety Series.

Offscreen, Colbert published I Am America (and So Can You!) in 2007 and contributed to 2004’s America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. He also arranged (with Stewart) the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a gathering in Washington, D.C., that served both to parody events staged by conservative commentator Glenn Beck and the Rev. Al Sharpton and to attempt to get a serious dialogue going on issues of the day.

On December 18, 2014, Colbert appeared in his final episode of The Colbert Report. His featured guest for the program was his friend Grimmy, also known as the grim reaper. In April 2014, after David Letterman announced his plans to retire in 2015, Colbert was selected to replace him as host of The Late Show. The Late Show took some time to find its new voice after premiering with Colbert on September 8, 2015, but it eventually climbed to the top of the ratings thanks to the host's deft handling of politically charged humor, particularly after President Donald Trump began dominating the news cycle.

Colbert also became known for recurring segments like Big Questions with Even Bigger Stars, which had him gazing up at the sky with his guest and engaging in absurd philosophical hypotheticals. In March 2020, after the coronavirus outbreak shut down production on The Late Show, Colbert made headlines by taping monologues from his porch, his bathtub, and other areas of his home.

Achievements

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  Stephen Colbert's show has been successful in being both informative and entertaining at the same time. Recipient of many awards, he continues "to expose the rhetorical shortcomings of contemporary discourse." The Colbert Report earned various honors, including Emmy Awards for outstanding writing (2008, 2010, 2013-2014) and outstanding variety series (2013-2014), and a Peabody Award (2008). He won a Grammy for A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All, in the Best Comedy Album category in 2010, which he shared with the sound engineering team and the producers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

    (The host of the award-winning humorous news program offer...)

    2004
  • Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not

    (Now in paperback, a hilarious, satirical look at a small ...)

    2004
  • I Am America (And So Can You!)

    (What The Daily Show is to the evening news, The Colbert R...)

    2007
  • America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't

    (Book store nation, in the history of mankind there has ne...)

    2012
  • I Am a Pole (And So Can You!)

    (The story of a pole, searching for his purpose in life.)

    2012
  • Stephen Colbert's Midnight Confessions

    (Forgive him, Father, for Stephen Colbert has sinned. He k...)

    2017

• TV series

  • Strangers With Candy

    (Return to high school with 46-year-old dropout Jerri Blan...)

    1999
  • Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law

• TV show

  • The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

    (Stephen Colbert brings his signature satire and comedy to...)

    2014
  • The Colbert Report

    (The prince of punditry Stephen Colbert is here, winning e...)

    2005
  • The Dana Carvey Show 1996

Religion

Stephen Colbert is a practicing Roman Catholic. Colbert taught at Sunday School every weekend at his church and taught his own specific story of salvation and had the children learn spiritual songs. To this day, he is a dedicated churchgoer. Colbert is an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church. He even used the power vested in him to marry real-life couple Mike Cassesso and MaiLien Le live on an episode of The Colbert Report.

Politics

Stephen Colbert is a registered Democrat. He supported Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential elections.

Views

Colbert is a generous philanthropist who has given liberally to charity. Colbert has hosted high-profile charity events for Amnesty International, a worldwide organization which advocates for human rights for people all over the world. Colbert has also donated to Autism Speaks, which is an organization that funds Autism research, and seeks to find the best preventative measures and potential cures.

In the past, Colbert has also used his show as a direct vehicle for generating charity funds. For example, he once made a deal with Microsoft, wherein they would donate $2,500 to Colbert’s relief fund for the BP oil spill (sardonically titled the Colbert Nation Gulf of America Fund) every time that Colbert said Bing on the air - and ultimately, Colbert said Bing 40 times. Colbert also once generated charity funds through eBay by selling a portrait that was used as a prop from the Colbert Report. The prop was a sort of recursive image, featuring a portrait of the celebrity standing alongside another self-portrait.

Quotations: "Fake news executives are nicer than real news executives, though real news executives are funnier than fake news executives. They don't know they're being funny"

"Don't cry over spilled milk. By this time tomorrow, it'll be free yogurt."

"Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Give a man a sub-prime fish loan and you're in business, buddy."

Personality

In 1974, when he was 10, Colbert experienced what was likely the defining event of his childhood when his father and two of his brothers were killed in a plane crash. He grew introverted, finding solace in reading, especially science fiction and fantasy novels by authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien.

Stephen Colbert is a huge Lord of the Rings fan and has an encyclopedic knowledge of the series. Specifically recited the entire biography of Lord of the Rings character Aragorn from memory when Viggo Mortensen appeared on The Daily Show (1996). Mortensen sent him a platter full of Lord of the Rings characters carved out of chocolate.

Colbert was a huge fan of Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, playing non-stop from 1977 until 1981. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, he’s since noticed that the role-playing and improvisation of the game helped him later on in life and in his career.

In 2018, the comic opened up to Rolling Stone about his battles with anxiety. He said he used to take medication, until realizing during his time with Second City that the symptoms went away while he was performing.

Physical Characteristics: Stephen Colbert is deaf in his right ear. As a result of an operation he had when he was young, he can fold his right ear inside out and can pop it out when he squints his eye.

Quotes from others about the person

• "He's like a living wall of encyclopedias that like to drink beer." - Paul Dinello

Interests

• Theater

• Politicians

  Joe Biden

• Writers

  Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, The Enduring Chill by Flannery O'Connor

• Artists

  Shepard Fairey, Andres Serrano, Frank Stella

• Sport & Clubs

  Baseball

• Music & Bands

  Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Ben Folds Five

Connections

Stephen Colbert is married to Evelyn McGee-Colbert. They live in Montclair, New Jersey, with their three kids, a daughter, Madeline, and two sons, Peter and John.

Father:

James William Colbert, Jr.

Colbert died in the crash of an Eastern Airlines DC-9 jet in Charlotte, N.C. In all, 69 of the 82 persons aboard were killed, including two of Colbert's sons, Peter, 15 years old, and Paul, 18. Dr. Colbert, who was 53, was accompanying the boys to Connecticut, where they were to enroll in school. At the time of his death, Colbert was vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina at Charleston.

Mother:

Lorna Colbert

After James William Colbert, Jr. and his sons Paul and Peter were killed in a plane crash on September 11, 1974, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Stephen, who’d spent the first years of his life in a household overflowing with brothers and sisters, lived alone with his mother. But he wasn’t so withdrawn that he pulled away from his mother. On the contrary, he worked overtime to help her.

Spouse:

Evelyn McGee-Colbert

Colbert and his wife, fellow actor Evelyn McGee, have been married since 1993. They both grew up in the same town in South Carolina - in fact, when they were kids, they lived just blocks away from each other, but they had no idea and didn’t meet until much later in life when they were both adults.

Sister:

Elizabeth Colbert Busch

Elizabeth Colbert Busch is the Director of Business Development at Clemson University’s Restoration Institute and a candidate for the 2013 special election for South Carolina's 1st congressional district.

Brother:

Paul Colbert

Paul Colbert died in the same plane crash as his father and brother.

Brother:

Peter Colbert

Peter Colbert died in the same plane crash as his father and brother.

Sister:

Margo Colbert

Brother:

William Colbert

Sister:

Mary Colbert

Brother:

Edward Colbert

Brother:

James Colbert

Brother:

Thomas Colbert

Brother:

Jay Colbert

Daughter:

Madeline Colbert

Son:

John Colbert

Son:

Peter Colbert

Acquaintance:

Ansel Elgort

colleague:

David Letterman

colleague:

Jimmy Fallon

colleague:

Jimmy Kimmel

References

• Stephen Colbert on Instagram