Stand-up
Fallon gives credit to troll dolls for his big break. He was given a troll doll with a graduation cap in his senior year of high school. His mother heard about an impression contest at Bananas Comedy Club in Poughkeepsie, NY. Fallon came up with a stand-up routine that was a commercial for troll dolls. He would impersonate various celebrities auditioning to be the spokesperson. He won the contest and after college he began to do stand-up tours across the country. When he was in Los Angeles, he took improv classes with The Groundlings..
Early work
Fallon appeared in the feature film
The Scheme (originally entitled
The Entrepreneurs). His one line in
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. By late 1998, Fallon was studying at the Groundlings Theater in Los Angeles, making $7.50 a set at The Improv Theater, when he was summoned to New York to audition for the long-running late night sketch comedy show,
Saturday Night Live. Fallon did his impersonations of Jerry Seinfeld, French Stewart, Pat O'Brien, Chris Rock, Hilary Swank, Gilbert Gottfried, and Adam Sandler, Jeff Foxworthy, Eddie Murphy, Larry the Cable Guy, many of which drew laughter from producer Lorne Michaels. Fallon also did musical impersonations of Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, Alanis Morissette, and Robert Smith of The Cure.
Saturday Night Live
Fallon's impersonations helped land him on
Saturday Night Live as a featured player in the 1998-1999 season, and he was promoted to full cast member in the summer of 1999. Among his signature bits were his song parodies, which he performed when Colin Quinn was doing
Update and continued to showcase on special occasions after he had replaced him. He became co-anchor of
Weekend Update with Tina Fey with the October 7, 2000 season premiere. Fallon left
SNL in 2004 and began pursuing a film career.
Recurring characters
- Dave, a young man in the Will Ferrell/Rachel Dratch recurring sketch, "The Lovers", often used as a pawn in Roger and Virginia's matchmaking.
- Jarret (from Jarret's Room), a stoner who hosts his own Internet webcam show.
- Jeffrey's clerk, one of the clerks (the other being a male host for the show) of an upscale department store.
- Joey Mack, an obnoxious radio DJ who mocks his celebrity guests.
- Kip Bloder, brother to Chris Parnell's Wade Bloder.
- The Leather Man, an intense man who owns a shop filled with leather clothes.
- Nick Burns, a sarcastic tech support representative who helps office workers with computer problems (and is almost always exposed as not knowing as much as he should by one of the workers). He frequently used the catchphrase "Moooooove!" when ousting people from their desk so he could fix the problem.
- Pat Sullivan, nicknamed "Sully", one of the Boston Teens, boyfriend of Rachel Dratch's "Zazu" character.
- Patrick Fitzwilliam, a surly Irish who hosts a show called Top O' The Morning with his friend, William Fitzpatrick (played by Seth Meyers)
- Randy Goldman, from "Wake Up Wakefield", Megan's (Maya Rudolph) crush who doesn't know she exists.
- Rodney "The Zipper" Calzoun, the MC at the Rialto Grande
- Seņor Guadalupe Ramirez, one of the guitar players on the recurring sketch, "The 'How Do You Say, Ah, Yes' Show"
- Wade, one of the members of the boy band 7 Degrees Celsius
- Barry Gibb, in the skit called "The Barry Gibb Talk Show", he hosts along with his brother Robin Gibb (played by Justin Timberlake).
- Carson Daly, whom he impersonated with the catch phrase "I am a massive tool."
- Pat O'Brien , who "doesn't breathe through his nose ever!"
Other works
Fallon has appeared in
Taxi,
Anything Else,
Almost Famous,
Fever Pitch,
Band of Brothers,
Doogal,
Factory Girl and
Whip It. He occasionally does stand up comedy at the Comedy Club in New York City.
In 2002, Fallon released the comedy album
The Bathroom Wall. In a mixed review,
Rolling Stone praised the album's songs, calling the album the "second-best Prince parody ever, after Beck's 'Debra'." However the magazine panned the album's comedy routines, ultimately giving it two-out-of-five stars. The album was nominated for a Grammy in 2003 for Best Spoken Comedy Album. Fallon co-hosted the 2001 MTV Movie Awards with Kirsten Dunst on June 7, 2001. Fallon has played Neo in
Sex and the Matrix, a comedic two-in-one parody of
Sex and the City and
The Matrix. He hosted the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards alone that year. His opening number included parodies of videos by Eminem, Avril Lavigne, Nelly, The White Stripes, Dave Matthews and Enrique Iglesias.Fallon also hosted the 2005 MTV Movie Awards and played Anakin Skywalker in comedic parody of
Revenge of the Sith's Mustafar scene, in which Anakin and Padme have their last conversation. Fallon was named one of
People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2002, an honor Fallon found embarrassing.
Following the Boston Red Sox's World Series clinching game over the St. Louis Cardinals in 2004, Fallon ran onto the field at Busch Stadium with Drew Barrymore to film a scene for their movie
Fever Pitch.
In 2006, Fallon starred in "Spontaneous Combustion", a Traktor-directed Pepsi television commercial with actress Parker Posey. In the ad, Fallon and Posey can be seen dancing and jumping around to the song
Streamline by Newton. In October of that year, Fallon appeared on stage in The Secret Policeman's Ball, a charity gig filmed to raise awareness of Amnesty International at the Royal Albert Hall. Fallon made three appearances during the show, the first in a sketch in which he performed impressions of people such as David Bowie, Jerry Seinfeld and David Blaine in order to get past a doorman (Shaun Williamson) who claims Fallon isn't on the list. The doorman finally recognizes him for his role in
Taxi, but still won't let him in. He later masqueraded as Russell Brand before being led off by Williamson, and made one final appearance in a cameo role as the front of a pantomime horse in the Al Murray "pub landlord" routine.
In 2007, Fallon wrote the song "Car Wash for Peace" and donated all proceeds to charity. He performed the song on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and
The View and dedicated a MySpace page to the cause. Around the same time, a video circulated on various Internet sites called lonelyfallon32, in which Fallon parodied YouTube celebrity Jessica Rose (a.k.a. lonelygirl15) and later performed the song.
Fallon, along with his sister Gloria, wrote
I Hate This Place: The Pessimist's Guide to Life for TV Books in 1999. A second book is anticipated but has not yet been released, to be titled "I Hate This Place 2: Tokyo Drift." Fallon has also written a children's book, illustrated by Adam Stower, entitled
Snowball Fight.
Fallon also appeared on Diggnation's 185th show.
On May 4, 2010, NBC announced that Fallon would host the
62nd Primtetime Emmy Awards. With Fallon as host, viewership of the 2010 Emmy Awards increased slightly--by over 200,000 viewers from the year before.
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
Fallon succeeded fellow
Saturday Night Live alumnus Conan O'Brien as the host of NBC's
Late Night after O'Brien left the show to prepare to take over
The Tonight Show from Jay Leno in 2009. The deal for the long-expected succession was confirmed April 24, 2008, with an official announcement made on May 12, 2008 at NBC's upfront presentation. The official press conference was released on Hulu.com.
The show titled
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, first aired on March 2, 2009 with guests Robert De Niro, Justin Timberlake, and musical guest Van Morrison. Guests on the show's first week included Tina Fey, Jon Bon Jovi, Cameron Diaz, Donald Trump, and Drew Barrymore.
