Mike Myers

Michael John Myers (born May 25, 1963) is a Canadian actor, comedian, and filmmaker.

His accolades include seven MTV Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Michael John Myers was born in the Scarborough district of Toronto on May 25, 1963, to data processor Alice "Bunny" E. (née Hind) and insurance agent Eric Myers.

His parents were British immigrants from the Old Swan area of Liverpool.

Both were World War II veterans, his mother having served in the Women's Royal Air Force and his father in the British Army.

He has distant Scottish ancestry.

He has two older brothers: Paul, a musician, and Peter, who worked for Sears Canada.

He grew up in Scarborough and North York, where he attended Sir John A. Macdonald Collegiate Institute.

Myers made many appearances, including as Wayne Campbell, on Toronto's Citytv in the early 1980s, on the alternative video show City Limits hosted by Christopher Ward; Myers also made several appearances after the launch of MuchMusic, for which City Limits was essentially the prototype.

Myers also appeared as Wayne Campbell in the music video for Ward's Canadian hit "Boys and Girls".

He graduated from Stephen Leacock Collegiate Institute in 1982.

One of his neighbours and schoolmates was prominent voice actor Maurice LaMarche.

Myers began performing in commercials at two years old.

At the age of 10, he made a commercial for British Columbia Hydro, with Gilda Radner playing his mother.

At 12, he made a guest appearance as Ari on the TV series King of Kensington.

At 16, he was the guest star of the season 1 episode "Boy on Wheels" of the TV series The Littlest Hobo.

After graduating from high school, Myers was accepted into The Second City Canadian touring company.

He moved to the United Kingdom, and in 1985 he was one of the founding members of The Comedy Store Players, an improvisational group based at The Comedy Store in London.

The next year, he starred in the British children's TV program Wide Awake Club, parodying the show's normal exuberance with his own "Sound Asleep Club", in partnership with Neil Mullarkey.

He returned to Toronto and The Second City in 1986 as a cast member in The Second City's Toronto main stage show, Second City Theatre.

The Wayne Campbell character was featured extensively in the 1986 summer series It's Only Rock & Roll, produced by Toronto's Insight Production Company for CBC Television.

Wayne appeared both in-studio and in a series of location sketches directed and edited by Allan Novak.

Myers wrote another sketch, "Kurt and Dieter", co-starring with Second City's Dana Andersen and also directed by Novak, which later became the popular "Sprockets" sketch on Saturday Night Live.

In 1988, he moved from Second City in Toronto to Chicago.

There, he trained, performed and taught at the Improv Olympic.

Following a series of appearances on several Canadian television programs, Mike Myers came to recognition during his six seasons as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1989 to 1995, which won him the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series.

Myers began appearing on Saturday Night Live on January 21, 1989 and eventually became the first repertory player added to the show's cast in over two years.

"He quickly became one of the show's biggest draws thanks to his talent for creating oddball characters with memorable catchphrases," according to Entertainment Weekly.

In addition to "Wayne's World" and "Sprockets", Myers starred in the recurring sketches "Lothar of the Hill People", "Stuart Rankin, All Things Scottish", "Lank Thompson", "Middle-Aged Man", "Simon", "Coffee Talk with Linda Richman", "Theatre Stories", "Phillip the Hyper Hypo", and "Scottish Soccer Hooligan Weekly".

He subsequently earned praise and numerous accolades for playing the title roles in the Wayne's World (1992–1993), Austin Powers (1997–2002), and Shrek (2001–2010) franchises, the latter of which is the second highest-grossing animated film franchise.

Myers made his film debut when he and Dana Carvey adapted their "Wayne's World" Saturday Night Live (SNL) sketches into the feature Wayne's World (1992).

It was among the most successful films of the year and was followed in 1993 by Wayne's World 2; Myers starred in So I Married an Axe Murderer the same year.

Myers's last episode as a cast member aired on January 21, 1995 (exactly six years to the day after his first episode aired).

He returned to host in 1997 and made an appearance as his movie character Dr. Evil in 2014.

In 2002, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Myers also played The Cat in the Hat in the 2003 live-action adaptation of the Dr. Seuss book The Cat in the Hat.

Myers acted sporadically in the 2010s, having supporting roles in Terminal and Bohemian Rhapsody (both 2018).

He made his directorial debut with the documentary Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon (2013), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

He created and starred in the 2022 Netflix original series, The Pentaverate, and appeared in David O. Russell's Amsterdam.

In 2017, he was named an Officer of the Order of Canada for "his extensive and acclaimed body of comedic work as an actor, writer, and producer."