Andy Samberg

Andy Samberg
Samberg in 2016
Born	David A. J. Samberg (1978-08-18) August 18, 1978 (age 43) Berkeley, California, U.S.
Alma mater	New York University (BA)
Occupation	Actor, comedian, writer, producer, musician
Years active	2000–present
Spouse(s)	Joanna Newsom ​ (m. 2013)​
Children	1
Relatives	Alfred J. Marrow (adoptive grandfather) Tammy Baldwin (third cousin)
Comedy career
Medium	Film, Internet, music, television
Genres	Improvisational comedy, sketch comedy, physical comedy, anti-humor, musical comedy
Website	thelonelyisland.com

Andy Samberg (born David A. J. Samberg;^[1] August 18, 1978)^[2] is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer, and musician. He is a member of the comedy music group The Lonely Island and was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012, where he and his fellow group members are credited with popularizing the SNL Digital Shorts.^[3]

Samberg has starred in several films, including Hot Rod (2007), I Love You, Man (2009), That's My Boy (2012), Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012), Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016), and Palm Springs (2020). Samberg has had lead voice roles in Space Chimps (2008), the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs franchise (2009–2013), the Hotel Transylvania film series (2012–present), and Storks (2016).

Since 2013, he has starred as Jake Peralta in the Fox, and later NBC, police sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, for which he is also a producer. For his work on the show, he was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2013.^[4]

Early life and education[]

Samberg was born in Berkeley, California on August 18, 1978.^[2] His mother, Marjorie "Margi" (née Marrow), is a retired teacher, having taught at John Muir Elementary School, and his father, Joe, is a photographer.^[5] He has two sisters, Johanna and Darrow.^[6] At age 5, he told his parents that he wanted to change his name to Andy.^[7][8] Samberg was raised in a Jewish family and considers himself as "not particularly religious."^{[9][10][11][12]} He attended Chabot Elementary School^[13] with his future Brooklyn Nine Nine co-star Chelsea Peretti.^[14]

In a 2019 episode of Finding Your Roots, hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Samberg discovered that his mother Marjorie, who was adopted by Jewish parents, is the biological daughter of a Sicilian (Italian) Catholic father named Salvatore Maida, who immigrated in 1925,^[15] and a German-Jewish refugee mother named Ellen Philipsborn, who had come to the US in 1938; they met in San Francisco.^[16] Samberg is a third cousin of US Senator Tammy Baldwin,^[17] and his adoptive maternal grandfather was industrial psychologist and philanthropist Alfred J. Marrow.^[18]

Samberg graduated from Berkeley High School in 1996, where he became interested in creative writing and has stated that writing classes "were the ones that [he] put all [his] effort into... that's what [he] cared about and that's what [he] ended up doing".^[19] He attended college at University of California, Santa Cruz for two years^[20] before transferring to New York University (NYU)'s Tisch School of the Arts, where he graduated in 2000.^[21] While at NYU, writer Murray Miller was his roommate.^[22]

Career[]

Acting and filmmaking[]

Samberg majored in experimental film. He became an online star and made his own comedy videos with his two friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone.^[23] When YouTube was created in 2005, the streaming of their videos became much more widespread. Samberg became a featured player on Saturday Night Live in part because of the work he had done on his sketch comedy website TheLonelyIsland.com, which helped them land an agent and eventually get hired at Saturday Night Live.^[24] Prior to joining its cast, Samberg was (and remains) a member of the comedy troupe The Lonely Island, along with Taccone and Schaffer. The trio began writing for Saturday Night Live in 2005 and released their debut album, Incredibad, in 2009. Samberg appeared in numerous theatrical films, commercials, music videos, and hosted special events, including the 2009 MTV Movie Awards.

In 2012, Samberg delivered the Class Day speech at Harvard University,^[25] and he starred with Adam Sandler in That's My Boy. The same year, he also starred in Hotel Transylvania as the main character, Jonathan, a role he reprised for its sequels Hotel Transylvania 2 and Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation.^[26] In September 2012, Samberg played Cuckoo in the BAFTA nominated BBC Three series Cuckoo;^[27] and, in 2013, he landed the role of Detective Jake Peralta in Fox's (now NBC's) police sitcom Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which first aired on September 17 of the same year.^[28] Samberg won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in 2014 for his role as Peralta. Samberg hosted the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards on September 20, 2015.^[29][30][31] Years later, he co-hosted the 76th Golden Globe Awards with Sandra Oh on January 6, 2019.

Samberg starred in Sleater-Kinney's "No Cities to Love" video along with other actors such as Fred Armisen, Elliot Page, and Norman Reedus. On May 16, 2016, Samberg and the Lonely Island performed their 2009 hit "I'm on a Boat" with classroom instruments on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, as part of a recurring segment on the show.^[32]

Saturday Night Live[]

In September 2005, Samberg joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player and writer. Similarly, Schaffer and Taccone joined the show's writing staff. Though his live sketch roles were limited in his first year, he appeared in many prerecorded sketches including commercial parodies and various other filmed segments. On December 17, 2005, he co-starred with castmate Chris Parnell in the Digital Short show "Lazy Sunday", a hip hop song about a quest to see the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The short became an Internet phenomenon and garnered Samberg significant media and public attention. Acclaim continued, especially for "Dick in a Box", a duet with Justin Timberlake that won a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.^[3] The video for his comedy troupe's collaboration with T-Pain, "I'm on a Boat", had over 56 million views on YouTube, after debuting on February 7, 2009. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award. Another digital short, "Motherlover", also featuring Timberlake, was released on May 10, 2009, to commemorate Mother's Day, and it is a sequel of "Dick in a Box".^[33] Outside of his prerecorded segments, he also participated in recurring live segments, such as his Blizzard Man sketch.^[34] On June 1, 2012, Samberg's spokesperson announced that Samberg had left the show.^[35][36] He returned to the show to host the Season 39 finale in 2014^[37] and to host the 40th anniversary special's Digital Short.

Personal life[]

Samberg is married to musician Joanna Newsom. He once described himself as a "superfan", and they met at one of her concerts.^[38][39] After five years of dating, Samberg proposed to her in February 2013, and they married on September 21, 2013 in Big Sur, California,^[40][41][42] with Saturday Night Live co-star Seth Meyers serving as Samberg’s groomsman.^[43] In March 2014, Samberg and Newsom purchased the Moorcrest estate in the Beachwood Canyon area of Los Angeles, California,^[44] which was associated with various historical figures: in the 1920s, it was owned by the parents of actress Mary Astor; and, prior to that Charlie Chaplin rented the estate. The couple also own a home in Manhattan's West Village.^[45] They announced the birth of their daughter on August 8, 2017.^[46]

Filmography[]

Film[]

Television[]

Video games[]

Awards and nominations[]

References[]

External links[]

• Andy Samberg at IMDb
• The Lonely Island
• Andy Samberg profile
• Short Movies with Andy Samberg at 101
• Samberg SNL video archive at Screen