Conan O’Brien Bio

Conan Christopher O’Brien has worked his way up thorough the comedy ranks of live shows, animations, movies, and television to recent stardom as the new host of The Tonight Show, in 2009. Born April 18, 1963, this very intelligent Irishman has worked his way to the top.

Born into an Irish Catholic family in Brookline, Massachusetts, near Boston, he was the third born of six young O’Brien children. Conan’s educated parents are his attorney mother Ruth (Reardon), and his physician, epidemiologist, and Harvard medical professor father, Thomas Francis O’Brien.

As a youth, Conan excelled in his high school classes at Brookline High School, where he was the school newspaper’s managing editor, and also was honored as class valedictorian upon graduation in 1981.

From there, he entered Harvard University. His scholastic success continued, and he graduated with magna cum laude honors from Harvard in 1985. His A.B. degree was in History and Literature. During high school and college, Conan was an avid writer, and he was president of the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine while a sophomore and junior in that school.

Destined for a career in television, Conan moved following college graduation to Los Angeles and found a writing job with the HBO comedy sketch show, Not Necessarily the News. He then worked on Saturday Night Live for three years, as writer, and later on as an episode host. He appeared in several skits and other productions, including writing four episodes of the The Simpsons.

Conan’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien variety show began in 1993. He proceeded to gain an audience of over 2.5 million viewers, and was selected to take over The Tonight Show in June, 2009 when Jay Leno left that program. Some notable highlights of Late Night with Conan O’Brien included a visit to County Kerry, Ireland, to visit the area where his family roots originated from in the time prior to the Civil War. Another very funny group of episodes included his trip to the country of Finland, where he enjoyed meeting president Tarja Holonen. There had been a long standing joke that Conan resembled this first female president of Finland, and his visit was filmed and later shown as a special.

Conan is known for his pale complexion, which he managed to work into comedy skits on his show, and for being very tall, topped by a rising shock of fairly bright red hair. He has received numerous honors over the years of Emmy nominations, and won one of the Emmy awards in 2007 for Best Writing in a Comedy Series. Conan celebrated his final Late Night with Conan O’Brien program and the first of his new The Tonight Show programs by featuring guest Will Farrell. Conan is married and has one son.