Jerry Seinfeld facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Jerry Seinfeld
Seinfeld in 2016
Birth name	Jerome Allen Seinfeld
Born	(1954-04-29) April 29, 1954 (age 69) Brooklyn, New York City, U.S.
Medium	Stand-up television film
Alma mater	Queens College, City University of New York (BA)
Years active	1976–present
Genres	Observational comedy clean comedy cringe comedy surreal humor deadpan satire
Subject(s)	American culture American politics everyday life gender differences human behavior social awkwardness pop culture current events
Spouse	Jessica Sklar ​ (m. 1999)​
Children	3
Signature

Jerome Allen Seinfeld (/ˈsaɪnfɛld/ SYNE-feld; born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. From 1989 to 1998, he played a semi-fictionalized version of himself in the sitcom Seinfeld, which he created and wrote with Larry David. The show aired on NBC from 1989 until 1998, becoming one of the most acclaimed and popular sitcoms of all time. As a stand-up comedian, Seinfeld specializes in observational comedy. In 2004, Comedy Central named him the 12th-greatest stand-up comedian of all time.

Seinfeld co-produced, co-wrote, and starred in the 2007 film Bee Movie, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. In 2010, he premiered a reality series called The Marriage Ref, which aired for two seasons on NBC. Seinfeld is the creator and host of the web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012–2019). He is married to author and philanthropist Jessica Seinfeld, with whom he has three children. Seinfeld has received twenty Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his work on Seinfeld and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee as well as four Grammy Award nominations for his comedy albums.

Early life and education

Seinfeld was born in Brooklyn, New York City. His father, Kálmán Seinfeld, a sign painter, was Jewish and collected jokes that he heard while serving in World War II. His mother, Betty (née Hosni) and her parents, Selim and Salha Hosni, were Jews from Aleppo, Syria. Their nationality was stated as Turkish when they immigrated in 1917, as Syria was under the Ottoman Empire. Seinfeld has an older sister, Carolyn. Salha's mother Garez Dayan, Seinfeld's great-grandmother, was a member of the Dayan rabbinic family, who claim ancestry back to the Medieval Exilarchs, and from the Exilarchs back to the Biblical King David. Seinfeld's second cousin is musician and actor Evan Seinfeld. Seinfeld grew up in Massapequa, New York, and attended Massapequa High School on Long Island. At 16, he spent time volunteering in Kibbutz Sa'ar in Israel. He attended the State University of New York at Oswego, and transferred after his second year to Queens College, City University of New York, from which he graduated in 1976 with a degree in communications and theater.

Career

1976–1987: Rise to prominence

Seinfeld developed an interest in stand-up comedy after brief stints in college productions. He appeared on open-mic nights at Budd Friedman's Improv Club while attending Queens College. After graduation in 1976, he tried out at an open-mic night at New York City's Catch a Rising Star, which led to an appearance in a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special. In 1980, he had a small recurring role on the sitcom Benson, playing Frankie, a mail-delivery boy who had comedy routines that no one wanted to hear. Seinfeld was abruptly fired from the show due to creative differences. Seinfeld said that he was not told he had been fired until he arrived for a read-through session and found that there was no script for him. In January 1981, he performed stand-up on An Evening at the Improv. In May, Seinfeld made an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, impressing Carson and the audience, leading to frequent appearances on that show and others, including Late Night with David Letterman. On September 5, 1987, his first one-hour special Stand-Up Confidential aired live on HBO.

1988–1998: Seinfeld and stardom

Seinfeld at the 44th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1992

Seinfeld created The Seinfeld Chronicles with Larry David in 1988 for NBC. It was renamed Seinfeld to avoid confusion with the short-lived teen sitcom The Marshall Chronicles. By its third season, Seinfeld had become the most watched sitcom on American television. The final episode aired in 1998, and the show has been a popular syndicated re-run ever since. Along with Seinfeld, the show starred Saturday Night Live alumna Julia Louis-Dreyfus and established actors Michael Richards and Jason Alexander. Alexander played George, a caricature of Larry David. Seinfeld is the only actor to appear in every episode.

1998–2010: Established career

After he ended his sitcom, Seinfeld moved back to New York City and returned to stand-up comedy instead of staying in Los Angeles and furthering his acting career. In 1998, he went on tour and recorded a comedy special, titled I'm Telling You for the Last Time. The process of developing and performing new material at clubs around the world was chronicled in a 2002 documentary, Comedian, which also featured fellow comic Orny Adams and was directed by Christian Charles. Seinfeld has written several books, mostly archives of past routines. In the late 1990s, Apple Computer came up with the advertising slogan "Think different" and produced a 60-second commercial to promote the slogan. This commercial showed people who were able to "think differently," such as Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. It was later cut short to 30 seconds and altered such that Seinfeld was included at the end, although he had not been in the original cut. This shorter version of the commercial aired only once, during the series finale of Seinfeld.

Seinfeld at the 49th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1997

In 2004, Seinfeld appeared in two commercial webisodes promoting American Express, titled The Adventures of Seinfeld & Superman. In these, Seinfeld appeared with a cartoon rendering of Superman, to whom reference was made in numerous episodes of Seinfeld as Seinfeld's hero, voiced by Patrick Warburton (character David Puddy on Seinfeld). The webisodes were directed by Barry Levinson and aired briefly on television.

On February 25, 2007, Seinfeld appeared at the 79th Academy Awards as the presenter for "Best Documentary." Before announcing the nominations, he did a monologue about the unspoken agreement between movie theater owners and movie patrons. On October 4, 2007, Seinfeld made a guest appearance as himself in the 30 Rock episode "SeinfeldVision." On February 24, 2008, at the 80th Academy Awards, Seinfeld appeared as the voice of his Bee Movie animated character Barry, presenting Best Animated Short Film. Before announcing the nominees, he showed a montage of film clips featuring bees, saying that they were some of his early work (as Barry).

On June 2, 2008, amidst his spring 2008 tour, Seinfeld performed in his hometown of New York City for a one-night-only show at the Hammerstein Ballroom to benefit Stand Up for a Cure, a charity aiding lung cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In August 2008, the Associated Press reported that Jerry Seinfeld would be the pitchman for Windows Vista, as part of a $300-million advertising campaign by Microsoft. The ads, which were intended to create interest for Windows in support of the subsequent "I'm a PC" advertisements, began airing in mid-September 2008. They were cut from television after three installments; Microsoft opted to continue with the "I'm a PC" advertisements and run the Seinfeld ads on the Microsoft website as a series of longer advertisements. In March 2009, it was announced that Seinfeld and the entire cast of Seinfeld would be appearing for a reunion in Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. The fictional reunion took place in the seventh season's finale and starred most of the original cast, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, in a multiple-episode arc. Seinfeld appeared on an episode of the Starz original series Head Case. As was the case in many of his previous guest appearances on sitcoms, he played himself.

In Australia, Seinfeld appeared on a series of advertisements for the Greater Building Society, a building society based in New South Wales and southeastern Queensland. His appearance in these ads was highly publicized and considered a coup for the society, being the third time Seinfeld had appeared in a television commercial. The advertisements were filmed in Cedarhurst, Long Island, with the street designed to emulate Beaumont Street in Hamilton, where the Greater's head offices are located. Seinfeld also wrote the scripts for the 15 advertisements that were filmed. The ads largely aired in the Northern New South Wales television market, where the society has most of its branches. Seinfeld was the first guest on Jay Leno's talk show The Jay Leno Show, which premiered on September 14, 2009. Seinfeld was featured on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update sketch to do the "Really!?!" segment with Seth Meyers. He executive produced and regularly appeared as a panelist in The Marriage Ref. On August 30, 2010, Seinfeld made a surprise guest appearance on The Howard Stern Show, ending the feud the two had in the early 1990s.

Seinfeld toured the U.S. in 2011 and made his first stand-up appearance in the United Kingdom in 11 years. In July 2011, he was a surprise guest on The Daily Show, helping Jon Stewart to suppress his urge to tell "cheap" "Michele Bachmann's husband acts gay" jokes. Seinfeld also launched a personal archives website at JerrySeinfeld.com and appeared in the HBO special Talking Funny with fellow comedians Chris Rock, Louis C.K., and Ricky Gervais in the same year.

2011–present

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Seinfeld tapping on the Oval Office windows of the White House with President Barack Obama in 2015

In 2012, Seinfeld started a web series titled Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, in which he would pick up a fellow comedian in a different car each episode and take them out for coffee and conversation. The show originally aired on the Crackle streaming service and then was bought by Netflix. The initial series consisted of ten episodes lasting from 7 to 25 minutes each. The show has continued to get high-profile guests such as Tina Fey, Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K., Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, David Letterman, Chris Rock, John Mulaney, Mel Brooks, Don Rickles, Ellen DeGeneres, Howard Stern, and Jerry Lewis. The show has also hosted Seinfeld alums Larry David, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards. Season seven featured its most high-profile guest, then-President Barack Obama. In a farewell tribute video for the Obamas before the President left office, Seinfeld stated, "That knocking on the Oval Office window. That probably was the peak of my entire existence."

Seinfeld signed a deal with Netflix in January 2017 that included placing Seinfeld and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on their streaming service as well as two new Seinfeld stand-up specials and the development of scripted and non-scripted comedy programming. As part of the deal, all episodes of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee were made available on the streaming service, in addition to a new 24-episode season.

In June 2013, Seinfeld appeared on rapper Wale's album The Gifted, on the song "Outro About Nothing." In 2013, Seinfeld was offered $110 million by television executive Warren Littlefield to make another season of Seinfeld. He turned it down because he felt the timing to continue was not right. Seinfeld received coverage for his speech at the 2014 Clio Awards ceremony, where he received an honorary award, as media reporters said that he "mocked" and "ripped apart" the advertising industry; his statement that "I love advertising because I love lying" received particular attention.

In 2014, Seinfeld hosted the special Don Rickles: One Night Only at the Apollo Theatre. The event celebrated Don Rickles and his career, but also served as a roast among friends. Those who participated in the event included Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Nathan Lane, Regis Philbin, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese. On February 15, 2015, Seinfeld made a guest appearance on the Saturday Night Live 40th Anniversary Special, where he hosted the "Questions from the Audience" segment, which included cameos from Michael Douglas, John Goodman, James Franco, Larry David, Ellen Cleghorne, Dakota Johnson, Tim Meadows, Bob Odenkirk, and Sarah Palin (who Seinfeld initially mistook for Tina Fey). On May 20, 2015, Seinfeld made a guest appearance on David Letterman's final Late Show episode. Seinfeld joined other friends of the show to pay tribute to Letterman. The other guests included Alec Baldwin, Barbara Walters, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Peyton Manning, Tina Fey, and Bill Murray who all participated in The Top Ten List segment, "Things I've Always Wanted to Say to Dave."

In January 2017, Seinfeld went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and joined Dave Chappelle and Jimmy Fallon in honoring outgoing First Lady Michelle Obama, and played a game of Catchphrase, which Obama and Fallon won to Seinfeld's dismay. On September 19, 2017, Netflix released the stand-up comedy special Jerry Before Seinfeld. It follows Seinfeld as he returns for a stand-up routine at the New York City comedy club, Comic Strip Live, which started his career. It is intercut with documentary clips and his stand-up special. It was later released as an LP, CD and download album, and was nominated for a 2018 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.

In 2020, it was announced that Netflix would be releasing Seinfeld's first original stand-up special in 22 years, 23 Hours to Kill. The special premiered on May 5. In October 2020, Seinfeld joined Steve Martin in a discussion about comedy at The New Yorker Festival. They discussed subjects ranging from the creative process, Netflix, and The Oscars, to their comedy backgrounds, and the future of comedy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Books

Seinfeld wrote the book SeinLanguage, released in 1993. Written as his television show was first rising in popularity, it is primarily an adaptation of his stand-up material. The title comes from an article in Entertainment Weekly listing the numerous catchphrases for which the show was responsible. In 2002, he wrote the children's book Halloween. The book was illustrated by James Bennett. Seinfeld wrote the forewords to Ted L. Nancy's Letters from a Nut series of books and Ed Broth's Stories from a Moron. Seinfeld also wrote the foreword to the Peanut Butter & Co. Cookbook. In October 2020, Seinfeld released his new book Is This Anything?. The book chronicles Seinfeld's 45 years working in comedy and contains many of his best bits that span from various decades.

Influences

Seinfeld has stated, "On the Mount Rushmore of stand-up comedy, there are four faces, in my opinion: Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Cosby and Don Rickles." Seinfeld has also cited as his influences the humorist Jean Shepherd, Mad Magazine, Jonathan Winters, Jerry Lewis, Robert Klein, and Abbott and Costello. He stated, "Monty Python was a gigantic influence on me. They were just about silly, funny things that meant nothing, and that’s the stuff I love. There’s a wonderful childlike freedom in those kinds of things."

In the Netflix comedy special, Jerry Before Seinfeld, he displayed his personal comedy albums collection from when he was a teenager. These albums included:

• Lenny Bruce – Thank You Masked Man (1972)
• George Carlin – Class Clown (1972)
• Steve Martin – Let's Get Small (1977)
• Bob Newhart – The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart (1960)
• Mike Nichols and Elaine May – Improvisations to Music (1958)
• Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner – 2000 and One Years with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks (1961)

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Seinfeld stated his five favorite films are The Heartbreak Kid (1972), The Graduate (1967), The In-Laws (1979), A Night at the Opera (1935), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).

Those influenced by Seinfeld include John Mulaney, Jim Gaffigan, Judd Apatow, Ellen DeGeneres, and Issa Rae.

Personal life

Seinfeld is a fan of the New York Mets, and periodically calls Steve Somers' show on WFAN-AM, a sports talk radio station, as "Jerry from Queens." Seinfeld called four innings of a Mets game on SportsNet New York on June 23, 2010, reuniting with analyst Keith Hernandez, who appeared in the Seinfeld two-part episode entitled "The Boyfriend." According to Seinfeld, he thinks about baseball "all day" and has said "when I think of retirement, all I would think of is going to a baseball game every day."

Seinfeld is left-handed and the first joke he ever wrote was about the topic.

Seinfeld has made several political contributions, including to George W. Bush's and Al Gore's presidential campaigns in 2000, and subsequently to four Democratic Party primary candidates in 2000 and 2004.

Relationships and marriage

Years before Seinfeld was created, Seinfeld dated Carol Leifer. She was a fellow comedian, and one of the inspirations for the Seinfeld character Elaine Benes. .....

Seinfeld with Lonstein (left) at the 47th Primetime Emmy Awards in 1995

In May 1993, Seinfeld met Shoshanna Lonstein. Seinfeld and Lonstein dated for approximately four years, from 1993 to 1997. She transferred from George Washington University to UCLA, in part to be with him, and cited missing New York City and constant press coverage as reasons for the relationship ending.

Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld in 2010

In August 1998, while at a Reebok Sports Club, Seinfeld met Jessica Sklar, a public relations executive for Tommy Hilfiger who had just returned from a three-week honeymoon in Italy with then-husband Eric Nederlander, a theatrical producer and scion of a theater-owning family. Sklar filed and married Seinfeld on December 25, 1999. Comedian George Wallace was the best man at the wedding. After the nuptials, Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld bought Billy Joel's house in Amagansett, Long Island, for US$32 million after news of the couple's interest in the property became public in 2000. The Seinfelds have a daughter and two sons.

Charity

In 1999, Seinfeld auctioned a Breitling Chronomat watch as part of the "Famous Faces, Watch Auction For Charity" event in New York City. This watch sold for $11,000.

In 2001, Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld created the charitable organization The Good+Foundation after their first child was born. Good+Foundation grants donations of products and services to programs that have demonstrated a capacity to address family poverty in three focus areas: supporting new mothers, investing in early childhood, and engaging fathers. GOOD+ Foundation has donated over $42M worth of items through its partner network across the United States.

Seinfeld has also participated in Jon Stewart's charity event, Night of Too Many Stars.

Automobiles

Seinfeld's most common car acquisitions involve Porsches.

Seinfeld is an automobile enthusiast and collector, and he owns a collection of about 150 cars, including a large Porsche collection. He rented a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport in Santa Monica, California, for an extended period during the 1990s for storage of some of the vehicles in the collection. In 2002, Seinfeld purchased property on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City where he built a $1.4 million two-story garage to store part of his Porsche collection on the East Coast. One tally has Seinfeld owning 43 Porsches. Paul Bannister has written that Seinfeld's collection includes Porsche 911s from various years, 10 Porsche Boxsters each painted a different color, and the 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, the same model and pearl-grey color that actor James Dean had been driving before he crashed that car and subsequently died.

The Discovery Channel television show Chasing Classic Cars claimed that Seinfeld owns the first and last produced air-cooled Porsche 911s. The centerpiece is a $700,000 Porsche 959, one of only 337 built. He was originally not allowed to drive it, because the car was "not street legal." U.S. emissions and crash tests had not been performed for the model because Porsche refused to donate four Porsche 959s for destruction tests. Seinfeld imported the car "for exhibition purposes," on the stipulation that it may never be driven on U.S. roads. The car was made U.S. street legal in 1999 under the "Show or Display" federal law. Seinfeld wrote an article for the February 2004 issue of Automobile, reviewing the Porsche Carrera GT.

Filmography

Film

Television

Stand-up specials

Video games

Discography

Directing

Written works

• SeinLanguage (1993)
• Halloween (2002)
• Is This Anything? (2020)

Writing credits for Seinfeld

The list below only includes episodes mainly written by Seinfeld, as he (and Larry David in Seasons 1 through 7) rewrote the drafts for each episode.

Awards and nominations

Primetime Emmy Awards

Grammy Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Screen Actors Guild Award

Other awards

• American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1992)
• American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1993)
• Nominated – American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1996)
• Nominated – American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Performer in a TV Series (1999)

See also

In Spanish: Jerry Seinfeld para niños