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• Born: 7 February 1966
• Birthplace: Georgetown, South Carolina
• Best Known As: Director and star of the movie Head of State

Chris Rock's no-holds-barred approach to stand-up comedy -- and his extraordinary work ethic -- has earned him comparisons to Richard Pryor and George Carlin, and made him one of the most successful acts in the United States. Brooklyn-raised Rock got his start in New York nightclubs in the late 1980s. He became nationally known thanks to the television comedy shows Saturday Night Live (1989-92) and In Living Color (1993-94), as well as brief appearances in several movies during the '90s (including a dramatic role as a drug addict in the 1991 drama New Jack City). Frequent touring and HBO specials made Rock famous for edgy material on social and political issues, especially racism (Rock, an African-American, has been called an "equal opportunity offender"). A Grammy winner (2000's Bigger and Blacker and 2005's Never Scared), an Emmy winner (1997's Bring the Pain) and an author (1997's Rock This), Rock's also a bit of a movie star, with credits that include CB4 (1993), Bad Company (2001, with Anthony Hopkins) and Head of State (2003, which he also directed). Rock was chosen to host the 2005 Academy Awards show, following in the footsteps of Billy Crystal, Johnny Carson and Bob Hope.

• Genre: Comedy
• Active: '90s, 2000s
• Instrument: Bass, Vocals, Producer

Biography

Chris Rock is a stand-up comedian who first rose to national stardom when he appeared on Saturday Night Live in the late '80s and early '90s. The early '90s were Rock's popular heyday, when he frequently appeared in films; he released his first comedy record, Born Suspect, in 1991. When he left SNL, his popularity dipped, and for much of the mid-'90s, he had difficulty landing movie roles; when he did, no one went to the movies. Rock began concentrating on his stand-up work again, and by the release of his second album, Roll With the New, in 1997, he had become one of the most popular and best-reviewed comedians in America. 1999 saw the release of Bigger & Blacker. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Representative Albums:

Bigger & Blacker, Born Suspect, Never Scared

Similar Artists:

Pauly Shore, Denis Leary

Influences:

Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, George Carlin

Followers:

A+ Plus

Never Scared Buy this CD

Bigger & Blacker Buy this CD

Roll with the New Buy this CD

Born Suspect Buy this CD

• Born: Feb 07, 1966
• Occupation: Actor, Writer, Director
• Active: '90s-2000s
• Major Genres: Comedy
• Career Highlights: Dogma, Nurse Betty, Lethal Weapon 4
• First Major Screen Credit: Comedy's Dirtiest Dozen (1989)

Biography

South Carolina-born African American comedian Chris Rock grew up in Brooklyn and projected a marked aptitude for comedy early in life. Rock traveled the New York club circuit during his adolescence, so aggressively and persistently that he established himself as a seasoned veteran by his late teens. He happened to be performing at the New York Comedy Strip c. 1984, when his break arrived in the form of an audience visit by one Eddie Murphy. Deeply impressed with the then eighteen-year-old rising star, Murphy cast him in his forthcoming Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), as a parking valet. It hardly constituted a breakout performance, but the role and newfound connection with Eddie Murphy helped Rock land a couple of small supporting roles, and eventually a spot on NBC's hallowed Saturday Night Live, from 1990-93. During his SNL stint, Rock also periodically guest-starred in fellow comedian Keenan Ivory Wayans' African American sketch comedy series In Living Color.

In 1991, Rock broke from comedy in favor of a more dramatic role, and his performance as a surprisingly innocent crack addict-cum-informant in Mario Van Peebles' New Jack City attracted a substantial amount of favorable attention; Roger Ebert praised Rock as "effortlessly authentic and convincing."

One could argue with some foundation that the role in New Jack City is indicative of Rock's driving force (i.e., the politics of modern society and race within the contextual framework of American culture). Although Rock employs comedic delivery, many of his favorite topics are quite grave, and Rock's ability to confront these issues, cloaked in ribald humor, helped launch his career during the late '90s. While his 1993 screenwriting debut, on Tamra Davis's CB4: The Movie, received lukewarm reviews at best, Rock established himself as a household name after his scathing HBO comedy special Bring the Pain (1996) earned him two Emmy awards and a significantly larger fan base. The same year, he received a third Emmy for his work as a writer and correspondent for Comedy Central's Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Then, in 1997, the successes of Rock's stand-up, his contributions to Saturday Night Live and In Living Color, his film roleass, and his work on Bring the Pain collectively inspired HBO to sign Rock for a sketch comedy series, The Chris Rock Show, that ran from 1997 to 2000. The program borrowed the formats of Saturday Night Live and In Living Color, yet it upped the vulgarity, volatility, and presence of hot-button contemporary issues - in addition to the intelligence. In addition to Rock, the program featured a cast of up-and-coming African American comics, such as Wanda Sykes and Mario Joyner. The program ran to sensational reviews.

Rock's film career expanded throughout the late '90s, and the young comic won particular notice for his role as a hot-headed law enforcement agent in 1998's Lethal Weapon 4 opposite Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, and later for Kevin Smith's irreverent Dogma(1999), as a bitter apostle of Jesus. He also published a book titled Rock This! with much success. Though Dogma received mixed reviews, in 1999 Rock mounted his second HBO comedy special, Bigger & Blacker, which found the comedian addressing topics from gun control to Bill Clinton and proper parenting techniques. In late 2000, Rock played an obnoxious hitman equipped with an incredibly inventive string of obscenities in Neil La Bute's controversial black comedy Nurse Betty, alongside Renee Zellweger and Morgan Freeman.

In 2001, Rock put his screenwriting abilities to the test in Down to Earth, a remake of 1941's Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and again in Pootie Tang, a feature spin-off of one of the characters from The Chris Rock Show. In 2001, Rock voiced one of the characters in Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and another in Osmosis Jones, and rejoined Kevin Smith for a cameo in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. In 2002, Rock was one of several comedians featured in Christian Charles' documentary Comedian, and in the same year starred opposite Oscar-winner Anthony Hopkins as a CIA spy in the Joel Schumacher-directed action comedy dud Bad Company. Rock then directed, co-wrote and starred in 2003's Head of State as an unlikely presidential candidate for the Democratic party.

Head of State divided critics; most felt nonplussed, or espoused mixed feelings, such as The Los Angeles Times's Manohla Dargis, who mused, " Rock can't set up a decent-looking shot, and… doesn't care about niceties such as character development… but…nonetheless wrings biting humor from serious issues with the… ferocity [of]… Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce." After Head, Rock's big screen activity diminished just a bit; he voiced Marty the Zebra in the CG-animated, family-oriented features Madagascar (2005) and Madagascar 2 (2008), but his most frequent turn during this period arrived in the form of a new semiautobiographical sitcom on UPN, Everybody Hates Chris, that debuted in September 2005. As written and produced by Rock, it cast Tyler James Williams as a younger version of the comedian, during the early '80s, who lives in the steel-tough area of Bedford-Stuyvesant and is bused, each day, to a school full of Italian Americans. As narrated by Rock, this sweet, gentle, nostalgic and witty program caught everyone off guard and drew outstanding ratings during late 2005 "TV Sweeps"; New York Times correspondent Alessandra Stanley was certainly not alone when she praised it as "charming" and compared it favorably to The Cosby Show - high praise, indeed.

In 2007, Rock returned to cinemas, posing a quadruple threat (writer/producer/ director/star) with the adults-only sex comedy I Think I Love My Wife. In that picture (a remake of Eric Rohmer's Chloe in the Afternoon!) Rock plays Richard Cooper, a suburban investment banker saddled with a wife and two kids, who finds it increasingly difficult to avoid delving into a rich world of sexual fantasies, and then to avoid an imminent affair with a gorgeous "old friend" (Kerry Washington) seeking career advice. I Think I Love My Wife took its stateside bow in mid-March 2007, to reviews as mixed as anything in Rock's prior career; most critics either loved or hated it; a few responded ambivalently.

~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Head of State Buy this Movie	Bad Company Buy this Movie	Comedian Buy this Movie	Down to Earth Buy this Movie
Laughing Out Loud, Vol. 2: More of America's Funniest Buy this Movie	A.I.: Artificial Intelligence Buy this Movie	Pootie Tang Buy this Movie	Osmosis Jones Buy this Movie

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comedian; actor

Personal Information

Born on February 7, 1966, in Georgetown, SC; son of Julius (a truckdriver) and Rose (a schoolteacher); married Malaak Compton, (a public relations coordinator), 1996; children: Lola Simone and Zahra Savannah.

Career

Comedian, actor; cast member on Saturday Night Live, 1990-93, and In Living Color, 1993-94; comedy specials include Born Suspect , 1991; Bring the Pain, 1996; Roll with the New, 1997; Bigger & Blacker, 1999; Never Scared, 2004; hosted the MTV Music Video Awards, 1997; hosted the Academy Awards (Oscars), 2005; co-produced the television sitcom The Hughleys, 1998; co-creator and executive producer of Everybody Hates Chris,, UPN, 2005; appeared in the films Beverly Hills Cop II, 1987; I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, 1988; New Jack City, 1991; Boomerang, 1992; CB4, 1993; Panther, 1995; Sgt. Bilko, 1996; Beverly Hills Ninja, 1997; Lethal Weapon 4, 1998; Doctor Dolittle, 1998; Dogma, 1999; Me, Myself, & Irene, 2000; Bamboozled, 2000; Nurse Betty, 2000; Pootie Tang, 2001; Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, 2001; Bad Company, 2002; Head of State, 2003; Paparazzi, 2004; The Longest Yard, 2005; Madagascar, 2005; author of Rock This!, 1997.

Life's Work

Chris Rock worked as a stand-up comic in local New York comedy clubs from the time he was a teenager. It was in these clubs that he learned how to make people laugh, a skill that Rock developed into a highly successful career. With a hit comedy show on UPN, multiple enormously popular appearances as host of the MTV Video Music Awards and one at the Oscars, two grammy-winning comedy album, and numerous film appearances, Rock was definitely on a roll.

Rock was born in 1967 and grew up in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. The eldest of six children, he dropped out of school-he later obtained a general equivalency diploma-and went to work as busboy, a mental hospital orderly, and a laborer unloading trucks for the New York Daily News, where his father was employed. Rock's humor--sharp, political, and streetwise--cracked up his co-workers, and he took the act to the local comedy club circuit. After viewing Rock's performance at Manhattan's Comic Strip Club in 1986, actor-comedian Eddie Murphy found the young comedian a spot on his HBO special, Uptown Comedy Express, and gave him a small role in Beverly Hills Cop II. Rock's portrayal of a rib joint customer two years later in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, a parody of a 1970s black exploitation film, led to appearances on The Arsenio Hall Show. Rock soon attracted the attention of Saturday Night Live's executive producer, Lorne Michaels, who asked him to audition for the show.

After a mass audition in Chicago in 1990, Michaels hired Rock as a featured player for the late-night show. Although he created such memorable characters as the militant talk-show host Nat X, Rock was dissatisfied with Saturday Night Live and left the show in 1993. In a 1996 Internet chat on Up Close, he remarked that during his stint with Saturday Night Live he "felt like the adopted [black] kid with great white parents." In 1994, Rock joined the cast of the predominantly black sketch show In Living Color, but the show was canceled that same year.

In addition to his work on Saturday Night Live and In Living Color, Rock developed a career as a film actor. In 1991, he received critical accolades for his performance in New Jack City, a film about a team of cops who bring down a Harlem drug lord. Directed by Mario Van Peebles, the film's cast included Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Judd Nelson, and Rock as Pookie, a young African American man trapped in a world of drugs and violence. To prepare for the role, Rock spent several days on the streets with a Brooklyn drug addict. The following year, he played the role of Bony T in the Eddie Murphy film Boomerang. In 1993 Rock also starred as Albert in the rap parody CB4, a film which he wrote and co-produced.

During the mid-1990s, Rock's career appeared to stall. Although he did several comedy specials for HBO and had a role in the 1995 film Panther, he had no offers to do an upcoming television series, which would offer an opportunity for steady work. Hoping to jump-start his career, Rock left the William Morris Agency in search of a new agent. Leaving the William Morris Agency only made matters worse. "After I left," Rock told Entertainment Weekly, "no one wanted me. Literally every agent in town turned me down."

Undaunted by this rejection, Rock decided to work harder to become a better comic and actor. He carefully studied the comedic techniques of some of his heroes such as Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, and Don Rickles and looked for ways to improve his performance. In 1996, Rock taped a comedy special for HBO entitled Bring the Pain. The show was a smash hit, earned Rock two Emmy awards and rekindled his career. HBO signed him to host his own show and Comedy Central's Politically Incorrect hired him to cover the 1996 presidential elections. He also landed a role in the film Sgt. Bilko. At the end of 1996, Rock married public relations executive Malaak Compton. In an interview with Time, Rock credited his career resurgence to the purchase of a new home, "People ask me how the change in my career came about...When I bought a new house I needed more money. So I had to work twice as hard. And in the work on the road, I got better."

During 1997, Rock's star continued to rise. He released the comedy album Roll with the New and a book entitled Rock This!, appeared with the late Chris Farley in the film Beverly Hills Ninja, and hosted the MTV Music Video Awards. Rock also appeared in commercials for Nike, where he was featured as the voice of the puppet Li'l Penny, and for 1-800 Collect. In 1998, Rock landed roles in the films Lethal Weapon 4 and Doctor Dolittle, where he delighted audiences as the voice of a guinea pig. That same year he co-produced the sitcom The Hughleys, which told the story of a successful African American family and their struggle to adjust to life in an all-white suburb. The show, which aired on ABC, received generally favorable reviews.

His success continued in 1999, when he appeared in his third special for HBO, Bigger and Blacker. The special was followed by a CD, and was taped in the middle of a 28-city tour of the U.S. MTV invited Rock to host the 1999 Music Video Awards, and he used his biting humor to poke fun at many of the big winners of the night. He topped his previous success with the awards show by again making it one of the highest rated shows in cable history. All of this was capped with an appearance in the movie Dogma, in which Rock played the 13th apostle, who was supposedly left out of the Bible because he was black. In this highly controversial film, Rock is excluded from biblical history also because he reveals that Jesus was an African American. The movie suffered widespread criticism from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

In addition to his work as an actor and working on television specials, he was involved in putting together a humor magazine at Howard University, and in 2001 Rock released a directorial effort, called Pootie Tang, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Lance Crouther. That year he served as the executive producer of Down to Earth and was named comedy star of the year at the ShoWest awards.

By 2005, Rock was still rolling, with film projects that included 2003's Head of State (which he also directed) and 2005's summer duo, The Longest Yard and Madagascar. He had hosted the Oscar's that spring, and was the co-creator and executive producer of UPN's new hit comedy series, Everybody Hates Chris, which was based on his life growing up in Brooklyn.

Although he achieved remarkable success, Rock remained modest. "It's a good time to be a young, black comedian," he told Time, "Of course, that's easy for me to say because I'm one of the people working. . . . No matter how good you are, you have to work hard-or you'll only be as funny as the next guy."

Awards

CableAce Award for Chris Rock: Big Ass Jokes, 1995; Emmy Award for Bring the Pain, 1997; Grammy Award for best spoken comedy album, 1997, for Roll with the New; CableACE Awards, best entertainment host and best variety series/special, both 1997, for The Chris Rock Show; Emmy Award nomination (shared with Lance Crouther, Gregory Greenberg, Jon Hayman, Paul Kozlowski, Ali Leroy, C.K. Louis, Steve O'Donnell, Chuck Skylar, and Jeff Stilson), for outstanding writing for a variety or music program, 1998, for The Chris Rock Show; NAACP Image Award nomination, outstanding performance in a youth or children's series/special, for "Pinocchio," Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, and Image Award nomination, outstanding performance in a variety series/special, for The Chris Rock Show, both 1998; Blockbuster Entertainment Award for best supporting actor, for Lethal Weapon 4, 1999; Grammy Award for best spoken comedy album for Bigger & Blacker, 1999; Emmy Award for outstanding writing for a comedy show, for a variety or music program, for The Chris Rock Show, 1999; American Comedy Award, for Bigger and Blacker, 2000; Comedy Star of the Year, ShoWest Awards, 2001; Comedy Ensemble Award (shared), Diversity Awards, 2005.

Further Reading

Books

• Rooney, Terrie M., ed. Newsmakers 98, Gale, 1999.

Periodicals

• Entertainment Weekly, May 21, 1999, pp. 50-51.
• Essence, December 2000, p. 68; December 2005.
• Jet, October 10, 2005.
• New York Times, May 27, 2005.
• Time, July 20, 1998, pp. 56-59.
• Variety, November 21, 2005.

Online

• "Chris Rock," IMDb, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001674/ (December 16, 2005).
• Reuters, October 14, 2004, reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6505253 (October 29, 2004).

Other

• Additional information for this profile was obtained from the "Meet Mr. Rock" Up Close Internet chat on June 6, 1996.

— Ann M. Peters

— David G. Oblender