Steven Wright

Steven Wright, born Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955), is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer and film producer. He is known for his distinctive lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations. Wright was ranked as the 15th Greatest Comedian by Rolling Stone in its 2017 list of the 50 Greatest Stand-up Comics.

Wright was born at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts, one of four children. He was raised Catholic, and his father worked as an electronics technician who tested equipment for NASA during the Apollo space program. Wright attended Middlesex Community College in Bedford for two years to earn his associate degree, then continued at Emerson College, graduating in 1978. He began performing stand-up comedy in 1979 at the Comedy Connection in Boston, citing George Carlin and Woody Allen as comedic influences.

In 1982, Peter Lassally, executive producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, saw Wright performing at the Ding Ho comedy club in Cambridge and booked him on the show, where he so impressed Johnny Carson that he was invited back within a week. His 1985 comedy album I Have a Pony, released on Warner Bros. Records, received critical acclaim and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, leading to the HBO special A Steven Wright Special. In 1989, Wright and producer Dean Parisot won an Academy Award for the 30-minute short film The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, which Wright co-wrote and starred in with Rowan Atkinson. He also supplied the voice of the radio DJ in Quentin Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs (1992).