Biography

After a crowd-pleasing run on TV's Saturday Night Live, Will Ferrell turned into an unexpected movie box office superstar with the hit 2003 comedies Old School and Elf. Ferrell's performing career began after college, when he joined The Groundlings, a comedy theater company based in Los Angeles. After years of improvisational comedy and the occasional TV role, he was made a regular cast member of SNL in 1995. Ferrell's awkward, half-burly, middlebrow charm, combined with his outrageous physical gags and impersonations of George W. Bush and others, made him one of the most popular members of the cast. Among his many memorable sketches was the "more cowbell" skit (2000, with Christopher Walken) which made the phrase a pop-culture favorite. Ferrell left SNL in 2002 to work full-time on his movie career. He quickly reeled off a string of hit comedies: first playing an overgrown Santa's helper in Elf and an aging undergrad in Old School, then a pompous local newscaster in the 2004 film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. (That film included Burgundy's signature sign-off, "You stay classy, San Diego.") Ferrell had two more big hits spoofing NASCAR racers in Talladega Nights (2006, with Sacha Baron Cohen) and ice skaters in Blades of Glory (2007, with Jon Heder). Ferrell also has appeared in smaller roles in several films with a group of comedy movie stars that includes Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Ferrell's other movies include Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, starring Mike Myers), Zoolander (2001, with David Duchovny), Bewitched (2005, starring Nicole Kidman), and the more serious-minded Stranger Than Fiction (2006).