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| Birth Name(s) : Norman Gene MacDonald |
Date of Birth: October 17, 1963 |
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N/A
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| Profession:
Actor |
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Full Norm Macdonald Biography
| Norm Macdonald has made a name for himself on "Saturday Night Live" as the Canadian that can do impressions of everyone from Burt Reynolds to Quentin Taratino. You can also catch him on the big screen in films such as "Dirty Work" (1998), "Man on the Moon" (1999) and "Screwed" (2000). |
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Additional Norm Macdonald Biography
Norman Gene Macdonald (born October 17, 1963) is a Canadian actor and comedian. He is known for his biting sarcasm, distinct muttering, slurred delivery, and prevalent use of the word "crackwhore" which became well known during his three years anchoring Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update.
Macdonald joined the cast of NBC's popular Saturday Night Live (SNL) program in 1993, where he occasionally did impressions of Larry King, Burt Reynolds, David Letterman, Charles Kuralt, and Bob Dole, among others.
Macdonald's time with Saturday Night Live effectively ended in late 1997 when he was fired from the Weekend Update segment upon the insistence of NBC West Coast Executive Don Ohlmeyer, who pressured the producers to remove him, explaining that Macdonald was "not funny." Some believe that Don Ohlmeyer's friendship with O.J. Simpson — a celebrity whom Macdonald often antagonized on the show — may have fueled Ohlmeyer's decision. Ohlmeyer denied the rumor, arguing that other NBC late-night comedians (e.g., Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, and other SNL players) also constantly lampooned Simpson with little to no sanction, and that his decision was based solely on audience reaction through tapes he had personally reviewed. Despite the incident, Macdonald left the show the following year under decent terms with Ohlmeyer, who originally pushed for producer Lorne Michaels to give Macdonald a shot at the Weekend Update desk in 1994. On February 28, 1998, one of his last appearances on SNL occurred as host of a fictitious TV show called Who's More Grizzled?, who asked questions of "mountain men" played by that night's host Garth Brooks and special guest Robert Duvall. In the sketch, Brooks' character said to Macdonald's character, "I don't much care for you," to which Macdonald replied, "A lot of people don't."
In 1999, Macdonald starred in the sitcom The Norm Show (later renamed Norm), co-starring Laurie Metcalf, Artie Lange, and Ian Gomez. It ran for three seasons on ABC. Macdonald also voiced Hardee's restaurant's (Carl's Jr. on the US West Coast) costumed mascot, the Hardee's star in advertisements. Macdonald appeared on Miller Lite commercials that year.
He appeared (to much applause) on the September 1999 Saturday Night Live primetime special celebrating the program's 25th year on the air. Macdonald was one of only three former Weekend Update anchors to introduce a retrospective on the segment.
Macdonald returned to Saturday Night Live to host the October 23, 1999 show. In his opening monologue, he expressed resentment at having been fired, then concluded that the only reason he was asked to host was because "the show has gotten really bad" since he left. . His multiple utterances of "God damn" were edited out of future repeats of the episode.
Despite his supposed lack of higher education, Macdonald reached the $1 million question on the Celebrity Edition of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on November 12, 2000. He guessed correctly for the $250,000 and $500,000 questions. Host Regis Philbin convinced him to stop at $500,000, since the loss of the prize money could have affected Macdonald's chosen charity. His after-game guess on the last question was revealed to be correct, so he would have won the million dollars. This was farther than any celebrity contestant on the show had gone.
In 2005, Macdonald signed a deal with Comedy Central to create a new sketch comedy pilot called Back To Norm, which debuted that May. The pilot was never turned into a series. Its infamous cold opening parodied the shocking suicide of Budd Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician who, facing decades of incarceration, committed suicide on live television in 1987. Rob Schneider appeared in the pilot.
In September 2006, Macdonald's sketch comedy album, Ridiculous, was released by Comedy Central Records. It features appearances by Will Ferrell, Jon Lovitz, Tim Meadows, Molly Shannon and Artie Lange. On September 14, 2006, Macdonald appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote Ridiculous. During the appearance, Macdonald made some controversial jokes about the recent death of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. Stewart, holding back laughter, pleaded with Norm to change the subject.
At the end of the Weekend Update segment before the 1996 presidential election, Norm urged viewers to vote for Bob Dole (of whom Macdonald frequently performed a comic impersonation), though hinting that he had solely said it so that he could continue impersonating him. In 2003, Macdonald appeared on Barbara Walters' program The View, publicly renouncing his Canadian citizenship as a joke over his home country's decision not to participate in the Iraq War, and said that he would be becoming a naturalized citizen of the United States (as of January 2006, he stated that he remains a Canadian citizen. "I just keep renewing my green card," said Macdonald in a telephone interview). On the November 16, 2000 episode of The View Macdonald said that he thought George W. Bush was "a decent man" and he jokingly called Bill Clinton a "murderer" (see Vince Foster). Macdonald later stated in Maxim magazine that he is completely apolitical, and that he was joking when he said Clinton "killed a guy," a statement which was, according to Macdonald, taken far too seriously by the hosts. |
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Norm Macdonald Quote(s)
| I would love to stay at SNL forever. But you can't stay in the same place. People think you're a loser. |
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