Stephen Colbert

Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( kohl-BAIR; born May 13, 1964) is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He is best known for hosting the Comedy Central news satire show The Colbert Report from 2005 to 2014, and the CBS talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert since September 2015.

Born into a Catholic family in Washington, D.C. and raised in South Carolina, Colbert originally studied to be a dramatic actor, but became interested in improvisational theater while attending Northwestern University, where he met Second City director Del Close. Colbert first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago. Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, comedians with whom he developed the sketch comedy series Exit 57, were in his troupe. Colbert performed on The Dana Carvey Show (1996) and wrote for the show, before collaborating again with Sedaris and Dinello on the sitcom Strangers with Candy (1999–2000).

Colbert's work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show gained him wide recognition. In 2005, he left The Daily Show to host The Colbert Report. Following The Daily Show's news-parody concept, The Colbert Report was a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows including The O'Reilly Factor, in which he portrayed a caricatured version of conservative political pundits, earning Colbert an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2006, which he did in character. This event led to the series becoming one of Comedy Central's highest-rated series. After ending The Colbert Report, he was hired in 2015 to succeed David Letterman, who was retiring as host of the Late Show on CBS. Colbert hosted the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards in September 2017.

Colbert has won eleven Primetime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and three Peabody Awards. Colbert was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2006 and 2012. His book I Am America (And So Can You!) was listed No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2007.

Early life and education

Stephen Tyrone Colbert was born in Washington, D.C., the youngest of eleven children (James III, Edward, Mary, William, Margo, Thomas, Jay, Elizabeth, Paul, and Peter) in a Catholic family. He lived for a few years in Bethesda, Maryland. Next, he grew up in James Island, an island and a suburb of Charleston, South Carolina. His father, James William Colbert Jr., was an immunologist and medical school dean at Yale University, Saint Louis University, and at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. From 1969, James Colbert Jr. was the school's first vice president of academic affairs. Colbert's mother, Lorna Elizabeth Colbert (née Tuck), was a homemaker.

In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as devout people who nevertheless strongly valued intellectualism, and taught their children it was possible to question the Church and still be Catholic. He has said his father was interested in French humanist writers including Léon Bloy and Jacques Maritain, while his mother was fond of Catholic Worker Movement leader Dorothy Day. Regardless, Colbert recalls having a "pretty conservative upbringing"; with his mother voting for a Democrat, John F. Kennedy, exactly once in her life. In an interview, his mother has described him as "rambunctious". As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television; to avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors, particularly John Chancellor.

Colbert sometimes jokingly claims that his surname is French. His ancestry though is actually 15/16 Irish, and one of his paternal great-great-grandmothers was of German and English descent. Many of his ancestors emigrated from Ireland to North America in the 19th century before and during the Great Famine. Originally, his surname was pronounced KOHL-bərt in English; Colbert's father, James, wanted to pronounce the name kohl-BAIR, but maintained the /ˈkoʊlbərt/ pronunciation out of respect for his own father. He offered his children the option to pronounce the name whichever way they preferred. Colbert started using /koʊlˈbɛər/ later in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Colbert's brother Edward, an intellectual-property attorney, retained /ˈkoʊlbərt/; this was shown in a February 12, 2009, appearance on The Colbert Report, when his second-oldest brother asked him, "/ˈkoʊlbərt/ or /koʊlˈbɛər/?" Ed responded "/ˈkoʊlbərt/", to which he jokingly replied, "See you in Hell."

On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and his brothers Paul and Peter, who were closest to him in age, died in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were en route to enroll Paul and Peter at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. He has discussed the impact the tragedy has on him and his philosophy of grief and suffering. Lorna Colbert moved the family from James Island to the George Chisolm House, in downtown Charleston, and she ran the carriage house as a bed and breakfast.

Colbert found the transition difficult and did not easily make friends in the new neighborhood. Later he described himself during this time as being detached, lacking a sense of importance regarding the things with which other children concerned themselves. "Nothing made any sense after my father and my brothers died. I kind of just shut off," he recalled. He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, a pastime which he later characterized as an early experience in acting and improvisation.

Colbert attended Charleston's Episcopal Porter-Gaud School participating in several school plays and contributing to the school newspaper but he was not highly motivated academically. During his adolescence, he briefly fronted "A Shot in the Dark", a Rolling Stones cover band. When he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a severely perforated eardrum caused him inner-ear damage severe enough to preclude a career involving scuba diving, and leaving him deaf in his right ear.

For a while, he was uncertain whether he would attend college, but eventually he applied and was accepted to Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia, where a friend had also enrolled. Arriving in 1982, he majored in philosophy and continued to participate in plays. He found the curriculum to be rigorous, but was more focused than he had been in high school and was able to apply himself to his studies. He developed an appreciation for stoicism, and the writings of Marcus Aurelius, jokingly claiming that "[I] was a stoic before it was cool". Despite the lack of a significant theater community at Hampden–Sydney, Colbert's interest in acting escalated during this time. After two years, he transferred in 1984 to Northwestern University as a theater major to study performance, emboldened by the realization that he loved performing, even when no one was coming to shows. He graduated from Northwestern's School of Communication in 1986. At age 21, Colbert auditioned and was subsequently accepted for the graduate drama program at New York University, but ended up declining to act in Chicago.