Jimmy Fallon, born in Brooklyn on 19 September 1974, has hosted NBC’s The Tonight Show since 2014. A former Saturday Night Live cast member, he has won four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award.
James Thomas Fallon was born on 19 September 1974 in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the son of Gloria (née Feeley) and James W. Fallon. His father worked as a machine repairman for IBM in Kingston, New York, and the family moved nearby to Saugerties. Fallon has described his childhood as idyllic, though his parents have been described as overprotective. He and his older sister, Gloria, were not allowed to leave home alone and rode their bicycles in the backyard. He attended the Roman Catholic school St. Mary of the Snow and, inspired by his time as an altar boy, considered becoming a priest before he turned to comedy.
Comedy and music filled his childhood. He listened to The Dr. Demento Show and recorded it on a reel-to-reel recorder, and he became obsessed with Saturday Night Live, which he was only allowed to watch in “the clean parts” his parents taped for him. With his sister he re-enacted sketches. As a teenager he impressed his parents with impressions of James Cagney and Dana Carvey, started playing guitar at 13, and won a young comedian’s contest with an impression of Pee-wee Herman. He graduated from Saugerties High School in 1992 and attended the College of Saint Rose in Albany, first as a computer science major and then in communications, performing stand-up on weekends.
He left college a semester early in 1995 and moved to Los Angeles at 21 to pursue comedy. He earned $7.50 a set at the Improv and took classes with the improv troupe the Groundlings. Years later, in May 2009, the college awarded him his bachelor’s degree in communications for his television work, together with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.
Joining Saturday Night Live was his lifelong goal. He auditioned in 1997 without success, but at his second audition, at 23, he performed a “celebrity walk-a-thon” of impressions of Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Bill Cosby and Adam Sandler. Writer Tina Fey, who was in the room, later said he was “completely ready to be on the show”. He debuted in September 1998, in the show’s 24th season, and during six years there co-hosted the Weekend Update segment.
He left in 2004 to star in films including Taxi (2004) and Fever Pitch (2005), and then returned to television in 2009 as host of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC, a show noted for its focus on music and video games. In 2014 he left that show to become the sixth permanent host of The Tonight Show.
Alongside television, Fallon has released two comedy albums and seven books, mainly aimed at children. His accolades include four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award. His route to the top of late-night television, from a Brooklyn boyhood spent taping sketch shows to the Tonight Show desk, remains one of the most closely watched careers in American entertainment.
Image: Jimmy Fallon waving on the set of his show in 2019 (file photo). Photo: Danielle Marie Carolan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
