Jason Stuart

Jason's father emigrated to the United States in 1949.

Barely able to speak English, he got a job as a janitor.

Jason's mother, Gloria, was born in Brooklyn in New York City.

She was 17 years old when she married 22-year-old Leonard Greif.

Leonard later got a job cutting ties from cloth in the New York City garment industry, and Gloria became a beautician.

The Greifs had three children: Steven, Stuart, and Karen.

The family moved to the Fairfax neighborhood in central Los Angeles, California, when Jason was a year old.

Jason Stuart describes his family as "not religious, but culturally Jewish."

Jason Stuart says that his father and paternal grandparents suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, leaving them constantly angry and afraid.

Both parents, he says, had outsize egos and refused to let anyone interrupt or silence them.

In Los Angeles, Leonard obtained a job with Castle Neckwear, and eventually rose to the position of vice president.

He later became wealthy investing in real estate.

As a closeted gay youth, Jason Stuart says he felt alienated from his dysfunctional family.

His father, he says, was more focused on making money than on showing his children love.

However, his father's focus on putting one's best self forward in business left Jason with a desire to always be true to himself.

His mother inspired him to be an artist, and he began performing at the local Jewish community center when he was eight years old.

He began taking acting seriously in junior high.

Jason Stuart was heavily bullied throughout his childhood for his perceived homosexuality.

He developed a quick wit and sense of humor because he was terrified and because it was an effective defensive mechanism, "so they could laugh with me rather than at me," he later said.

Being funny was also a way to express his feelings, even if they were hidden by irony or sarcasm.

Although he was always making jokes growing up, Stuart says he was despondent.

"When I was a kid, everyone thought I was jovial, funny. But I was one of those suicidal kids who went to sleep wishing I wouldn't wake up."

Stuart was chubby as a child, standing 5 ft tall and weighing 250 lb. He was attacked several times in junior high school after his peers assumed he was gay.

The word "fag" was written on his locker, a girl punched him in the face (for which he was hospitalized), and another student beat him until he was unconscious.

As a child, Stuart was impressed by sarcastic and self-deprecating comedians such as Lucille Ball, Totie Fields, Paul Lynde, John Ritter, and Lily Tomlin.

He also found actors Whoopi Goldberg, Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand inspiring.

Streisand appealed to him most.

He saw her in the film Funny Girl, and her "sad on the inside, funny on the outside" character seemed to mirror his own life.

Stuart's parents divorced when he was 17, and he left home a year later.

Both parents later remarried (his mother had 4 partners in total).

Lacking any connections in the entertainment industry, Stuart called every agent listed in the Players Directory (a directory of talent and casting agents, published twice a year).

Jason Stuart (born January 13, 1959), also known by his real name Stuart Ted Greif, is an American actor and comedian.

He first won notice on Star Search, where he lost to Martin Lawrence.

Stuart Ted Greif was born in The Bronx, New York, on January 13, 1959, and raised in Los Angeles, California.

His father Leonard Greif was Jewish and born in Poland.

Leonard was only 10 years old when Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

Jason's grandmother saw her best friends shot to death, and forced her family to flee even as other Jews and Poles argued that the Nazi occupation wouldn't be that bad.

Leonard and his parents spent the war on the run, being hidden by Christian families.

Jason's grandmother later learned that the rest of her family had been murdered.

He came out publicly in 1993 on the syndicated daytime talk show Geraldo, and has been called "the first openly gay stand-up comedian" by various media outlets (a title Stuart himself rejects).