Jerry Seinfeld

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.

Jerome Allen Seinfeld (born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer.

Seinfeld was born on April 29, 1954, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.