Bill Hader

William Thomas Hader Jr. (born June 7, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, and director. He was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2013, for which he received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations and a Peabody Award. He became known for his impressions and especially for his work on the Weekend Update segments, where he played Stefon, a flamboyant New York City nightclub tour guide.

Hader co-created the HBO dark comedy series Barry (2018–2023) with Alec Berg, in addition to playing the title role of Barry Berkman. He also served as producer, writer and director, for which his efforts garnered him eight Emmy Award nominations for the series. He won two, consecutively, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He is a star and producer of the IFC mockumentary comedy series Documentary Now! (2015–2022) along with Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers. He was Emmy-nominated for his guest role in Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2022.

In film, he took supporting roles in Hot Rod (2007), Superbad (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Adventureland (2009) and The BFG (2016), with leading roles in The Skeleton Twins (2014), Trainwreck (2015), and as an adult Richie Tozier in It Chapter Two (2019). He has done extensive voice work working on the Pixar films Monsters University (2013), Inside Out (2015), Finding Dory (2016), Toy Story 4 (2019), and Lightyear (2022), as well as films such as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), its 2013 sequel, The Angry Birds Movie (2016), its 2019 sequel, Sausage Party (2016) and the upcoming The Cat in the Hat (2026).

Early life and education

Hader was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 7, 1978, the son of dance teacher Sherri Renee (née Patton; b. 1956) and air cargo company owner, restaurant manager, truck driver, and occasional stand-up comedian William Thomas Hader (b. 1953). He has two younger sisters, Katie and Kara. His ancestry includes Danish, English, German and Irish. He attended Patrick Henry Elementary School, Edison Junior High and Cascia Hall Preparatory School.

Hader grew up with writer Duffy Boudreau, with whom he later collaborated. He says he "had a hard time focusing in class" and "was always joking around". Feeling he did not fit in, Hader filled his time watching movies and reading. He appreciated Monty Python, British comedy, and the films of Woody Allen and Mel Brooks, much of which his father showed him. He made short films with friends and starred in a school production of The Glass Menagerie. He was unable to gain admission to top film schools because of his "abysmal" grades, so he enrolled at The Art Institute of Phoenix, and later Scottsdale Community College. Hader's first job was as a Christmas tree salesman. He was also an usher at a Tempe cinema, where he could see films for free, but was fired for spoiling the ending of Titanic (1997) for unruly viewers. At Scottsdale Community College, he met Nicholas Jasenovec, who later directed Paper Heart (2009). In May 2024, Hader gave the commencement speech for Chapman University's graduating class and received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree.

Career

1999–2004: Early career

Hader's aspirations of becoming a filmmaker eventually led him to drop out of college and move to Los Angeles in 1999. His parents supported his decision, and let him use the money they had saved for his education for his living expenses. He found work as a production assistant (PA) while scouring the back pages of The Hollywood Reporter, and hoped to become an assistant director. He spent much of his life as a young man "lonely and underemployed" and large amounts of his time watching movies. He regularly worked 18-hour days as a PA, leaving little time to pursue his creative ambitions. He was a PA on the documentary Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy (2004) and the feature films James Dean (2001), Spider-Man (2002) and Collateral Damage (2002). He was also a post-production assistant on the VH1 reality show The Surreal Life (2003–2006). He was briefly a PA and stage manager on Playboy TV's sexual fantasy show Night Calls, but soon quit as he feared it would disappoint his parents. He eventually quit being a PA altogether after a bad experience while shooting The Scorpion King (2002).

Hader subsequently got a job as a night-time assistant editor at the post-production facility Triage Entertainment. He invested money in his own short film, but was too embarrassed to release it. Shortly thereafter, he and his then-longtime girlfriend broke up. Desperate for a change, he began attending comedy classes with friends at improvisational comedy enterprise the Second City in March 2003. He quickly realized that comedy was the creative outlet he had been looking for, and soon he, his new comedy compatriot Matt Offerman, and their two friends and fellow humor enthusiasts Eric Filipkowski and Mel Cowan formed a sketch comedy group, which they called Animals From The Future, and performed frequently for small audiences at backyard shows in Van Nuys. Matt's brother, actor Nick Offerman, told his wife, Megan Mullally, about them. After attending one of their backyard shows, Mullally told Hader she wanted to discuss him with Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live (SNL). After Mullally's recommendation, Hader was invited to fly to New York to audition for SNL producers. He had no material prepared when he was invited to audition, and was nervous and struggled to display his strengths during the audition. This resulted in his spontaneous imitation of an Italian man he had once overheard; the impression later become Vinny Vedecci, the first of his many recurring characters on the show. As a result of the audition, Hader got an agent and manager. Just before he was invited to work on SNL, he worked as an assistant editor on Iron Chef America.

2005–2013: Breakthrough and Saturday Night Live

Hader was hired as a featured player and made his debut on the show on October 1, 2005. His first role was as a psychologist giving his views about life and death during the emergency landing of JetBlue Airways Flight 292. He felt he had gone from "preschool to Harvard." He became the "impressions guy", hoping to fill a utility-player role "like his hero Phil Hartman." Hader has said that he performed impersonations of teachers and friends when he was growing up but did not do impersonations of famous people until his Saturday Night Live audition. His list of impressions includes Vincent Price in the Variety Vault sketches, Keith Morrison, Harvey Fierstein, Al Pacino, Rick Perry, John Malkovich, James Carville, Julian Assange, Eliot Spitzer, Alan Alda, Clint Eastwood, and Charlie Sheen. On July 19, 2012, Hader received his first nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his work on SNL. He is the first male SNL cast member to receive this nomination since Eddie Murphy in 1986.

Among the characters Hader played was Stefon, Weekend Update's flamboyant New York correspondent, whose recommendations consisted solely of bizarre nightclubs involving nightmarish characters, and was in love with and married to Seth Meyers. Stefon was originally a one-shot character on a season-34 sketch where a screenwriter named David Zolesky (played by Ben Affleck) invited his estranged brother Stefon over to pitch a family-friendly sports drama about a college student who bonded with his grandfather so he could try out for the college football team. He was based on two people that fellow SNL writer John Mulaney and Hader met: a wannabe club owner who always invited Mulaney to weird underground clubs, and a barista Hader had met who looked, spoke, and dressed like Stefon.

Hader made his film debut in the comedic film You, Me and Dupree (2006). The following year he took numerous roles including a supporting role as Officer Slater alongside Seth Rogen's Officer Michaels in the Greg Mottola directed Superbad (2007). His role in Superbad helped boost his public awareness and allowed him to appear on mainstream programs like Total Request Live, The Tonight Show, and MTV's Video Music Awards. Other roles that year included as Katherine Heigl's character's editor at E! in the Judd Apatow directed comedy Knocked Up, the acid-taking mechanic Dave in Hot Rod alongside SNL castmate Andy Samberg, and a recumbent biker in The Brothers Solomon starring Will Arnett and Will Forte.