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