James Thomas Fallon (born September 19, 1974) is an American comedian, television host, actor, singer, writer, and producer, best known for his work in television.
Fallon grew up with a love of comedy and music, moving to Los Angeles when he turned 21 to pursue stand-up comedy. He joined the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live as a cast member in 1998, fulfilling a lifelong dream. During his six years on SNL, Fallon co-hosted the program's Weekend Update segment. He left the show in 2004 to star in films such as Taxi (2004) and Fever Pitch (2005). After his film career, Fallon returned to television as the host of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC in 2009, where he was noted for a focus on music and video games. In 2014, he left that show to become the sixth permanent host of The Tonight Show.
Fallon has also released two comedy albums and seven books, mainly aimed at children. His accolades include four Primetime Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award.
James Thomas Fallon was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York City, on September 19, 1974, the son of Gloria (née Feeley) and James W. Fallon. His paternal grandmother was a German immigrant from Osterholz-Scharmbeck, while his maternal great-grandfather was a Norwegian immigrant from Fredrikstad. One set of his great-great-grandparents were an Irish couple from County Galway, with this great-great-grandmother herself being born to an Irish couple in France.
Fallon's father spent his adolescence singing in street-corner doo-wop groups then served in the Vietnam War. Shortly after his son's birth, he started working as a machine repairman for IBM in Kingston, New York. In preparation, the family moved nearby to Saugerties, New York. Fallon has described his childhood as idyllic, while his parents have been described as overprotective. He and his older sister, Gloria, were not allowed to leave their home by themselves and so had to ride their bicycles in the backyard. Fallon attended the Roman Catholic school St. Mary of the Snow. He considered becoming a priest, inspired by his experiences as an altar boy, but became more interested in comedy instead. He spent many nights listening to the radio program The Dr. Demento Show, which exposed him to both comedy and music; he often recorded it on a reel-to-reel recorder.
As a teenager, Fallon developed an obsession with the late-night comedy program Saturday Night Live. He watched it religiously, although he was only allowed to see "the clean parts" that his parents taped for him. He and Gloria would re-enact sketches such as "The Festrunk Brothers" with friends. In his teens, he impressed his parents with impersonations, including of actor James Cagney and comedian Dana Carvey. He was musically inclined and started playing guitar at age 13, going on to perform comedy and music in contests and shows. By his junior high years, he was labeled a class clown but was also described as "nice and well-mannered".
At Saugerties High School, Fallon was a performer in most stage productions and was twice a class social director. He won a young comedian's contest with an impression of Pee-wee Herman. He graduated in 1992 and then attended The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, where he was a computer science major before switching to communications in his senior year. He was an average student who would perform stand-up comedy on weekends. He would often board buses from his aunt's house in Fort Hamilton to perform sets at Carolines on Broadway in Times Square. He did not graduate, leaving college a semester early to pursue a comedy career.
Fourteen years later, in May 2009, Fallon returned to receive a Bachelor of Arts in communications, awarded by Saint Rose officials who granted him experiential learning credits for his television work. He joined his classmates at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center to collect his degree, where along with his BA, he was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters.
Fallon dropped out of the College of Saint Rose in 1995 to move to Los Angeles and pursue comedy full-time. He secured a manager and got bookings by the age of 21. He often did stand-up at the Improv, earning $7.50 per set, and he joined classes with the Groundlings, an improv comedy troupe. He appeared in the feature film The Scheme (originally entitled The Entrepreneurs). His one line in the 1997 film Father's Day was cut, but he can still be seen in the background. In 1998, Fallon appeared briefly on the show Spin City in the second season as a man selling photographs.
He remained fixated on joining Saturday Night Live. After two years of working with the Groundlings, he auditioned for the program in 1997 but was unsuccessful. When he was cast in a pilot presentation for The WB, Fallon made sure to include a clause in his contract specifying that if he were to join SNL he would be released from his contract. His manager sent videotapes to Marci Klein and Ayala Cohen, producers for SNL.
This was my ultimate goal. If I ever cut into a birthday cake and made a wish, I would wish to be on SNL. If I threw a coin into a fountain, I would wish to be on SNL. If I saw a shooting star, I would wish to be on SNL. ... I remember saying to myself, 'If I don't make it on [the show] before I'm 25, I'm going to kill myself.' It's crazy. I had no other plan. I didn't have friends, I didn't have a girlfriend, I didn't have anything going on. I had my career, that was it.
Fallon landed his second audition at the age of 23. At the "notoriously difficult audition", he was told by several people that creator Lorne Michaels almost never laughed during auditions. He feared being outshined by the comic before him, who came armed with an arsenal of props. Despite this, Fallon went onstage and did well, performing a "celebrity walk-a-thon" with impressions of Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Bill Cosby, and Adam Sandler, an SNL alumnus who had recently left the show. Michaels and others laughed.
Head writer Tina Fey, who was in the room, later said, "He's one of two people I've ever seen who was completely ready to be on the show. Kristen Wiig is the other one ... And Jimmy was ready—like, if there had been a show to do that night." He rushed through his original characters in order to arrive at his musical impressions, which he felt were stronger. Three weeks passed, and despite his feeling that he had not gotten the position, he was asked to meet with Michaels at the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. Michaels informed him that they wanted him for the show, and Fallon characterized the moment as being in "slow motion", remarking to Michaels before he left, "I'm going to make you proud."
Fallon debuted on Saturday Night Live as a featured player at the beginning of the show's twenty-fourth season in September 1998. He became a star by his fourth episode, when he performed Halloween-themed versions of songs by popular artists, as well as his Sandler impression. Fallon became a celebrity, considered charming by his largely female fan-base, receiving numerous letters from fans, and becoming the subject of numerous fan-sites. He became the program's most featured mimic, doing popular impressions of Robert De Niro, Jerry Seinfeld, and Howard Stern. He also starred as many original characters, including Nick Burns, an IT support nerd, Pat "Sully" Sullivan, one of the Boston Teens with Rachel Dratch, and in Jarret's Room, a fictional webcast hosted by stoner college students Jarret (Fallon) and Gobi (Horatio Sanz). He was promoted to repertory player in his second season.
In his off-time, Fallon released a book comprising e-mail exchanges with his sister Gloria, titled I Hate This Place: A Pessimist's Guide to Life (1999), and played a minor role in the film Almost Famous (2000). During their time at SNL, Fallon and Horatio Sanz often drank together. Sanz has described himself and Fallon as "super-functioning alcoholics", and said, "They say that kind of goes hand-in-hand with SNL, some kind of substance-abuse issues, because it's so stressful you easily find yourself blowing off steam a lot." On one occasion, they spent a Friday night watching The Strokes perform a midnight show, staying up drinking until the early morning, despite having to do SNL that night. "We actually took what we thought being on SNL was, what people think is awesome about it, and we made it happen," said Sanz, who said that he and Fallon got in more than a few bar fights.