Andrew Dice Clay

Andrew Dice Clay, born Andrew Clay Silverstein on September 29, 1957, is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He rose to prominence in the late 1980s with a brash, deliberately offensive persona known as "The Diceman", a cartoonishly hyper-masculine, Italian-American street-tough caricature that claimed to weaponise misogyny, ethnic bravado, and shock but caused widespread offense. In 1990, Clay became the first stand-up comedian to sell out Madison Square Garden for two consecutive nights, and that same year he played the lead role in the comedy-mystery film The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.

Clay was born to parents Jacqueline and Fred Silverstein in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he was raised. He began entertaining his family with impressions at age five and was playing drums by seven, inspired by big band music. As a teenager he worked as a drummer on the Catskill Mountains circuit in the 1970s under the name Clay Silvers. He began his stand-up career in 1978 when he auditioned at Pips comedy club in Sheepshead Bay, and in 1983 he added the "Diceman" moniker, abandoning impressions for an alter ego based on his heroes Elvis Presley, Fonzie, John Travolta, and Sylvester Stallone.

Clay has appeared in films and television including critically acclaimed supporting roles in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2013) and the 2018 remake of A Star Is Born, the latter earning him a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Performance by a Cast. His television show Dice aired on Showtime for two seasons, and he launched a podcast, I'm Ova Hea' Now, in September 2018.