Bill Hader

William Thomas Hader Jr. (born June 7, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and director.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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).

Hader gained widespread attention for his eight-year stint as a cast member on the long-running 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 Meyers, a flamboyant New York City nightclub tour guide.

Hader has had supporting roles in the films Hot Rod (2007), Superbad (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Adventureland (2009) and The BFG (2016), and 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, portraying leading and supporting characters in films such as the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs franchise (2009-2013), Turbo (2013), Inside Out (2015), Power Rangers (2017) and Toy Story 4 (2019).

At Scottsdale Community College, he met Nicholas Jasenovec, who later directed Paper Heart (2009).

He is a star and producer of the IFC mockumentary comedy series Documentary Now! (2015–present) along with Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers.

Hader co-created the HBO dark comedy series Barry (2018–2023) with Alec Berg, in addition to playing the title role as 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.