67 Facts About Jim Gaffigan

1.

James Christopher Gaffigan was born on July 7,1966 and is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer.

2.

Jim Gaffigan is regarded as a "clean" comic, using little profanity in his routines.

3.

Jim Gaffigan has released several successful comedy specials, including Mr Universe, Obsessed, Cinco, and Quality Time, all of which have received Grammy nominations.

4.

Jim Gaffigan co-created and starred in the TV Land series The Jim Gaffigan Show, based on his life.

5.

Jim Gaffigan was born on July 7,1966, in Elgin, Illinois, the youngest of six children born to charity worker and fundraiser Marcia Miriam and banker Michael Ambrose Jim Gaffigan.

6.

Jim Gaffigan was raised in Chesterton, Indiana, and often jokes about growing up in a large family.

7.

Jim Gaffigan's mother was accomplished at needlework and received a national award for original design and craftsmanship from the American Needlepoint Guild in 1985.

8.

Jim Gaffigan's father was the president and CEO of the Mercantile National Bank of Indiana for 15 years until his retirement in 1991.

9.

Jim Gaffigan's father was the first in his family to attend college, and encouraged his children to seek careers that promised job security.

10.

However, at about the age of five, Jim Gaffigan announced that he wanted to be an actor.

11.

Jim Gaffigan attended La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana, where he played on the school's football team.

12.

Jim Gaffigan attended Purdue University for one year, where he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, before transferring to Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, where he graduated in 1988 with a degree in finance.

13.

Jim Gaffigan moved to New York in 1990 to pursue comedy, a move that was inspired by his admiration for fellow Hoosier David Letterman.

14.

Jim Gaffigan worked in advertising during the day and took acting classes at night.

15.

Jim Gaffigan's career began in earnest when a friend from his acting class dared him to take a stand-up seminar that required a live set at the end.

16.

Jim Gaffigan was often found sleeping at his day job; his boss had to wake him up to fire him.

17.

Jim Gaffigan is famous for his Hot Pocket routine, which was inspired by a commercial he saw that he mistook for a Saturday Night Live sketch.

18.

Jim Gaffigan said he used it to fend off hecklers earlier in his career, when comedy clubs were more "combative".

19.

Jim Gaffigan cursed early in his career, and added cursing to his comedy album Doing My Time at the request of his label, in the hopes of drawing more teens.

20.

Jim Gaffigan has now largely removed profanity from his routine, as he feels his subject matter doesn't lend itself to cursing and that it reduced the effort he put into crafting his jokes.

21.

Four years later, on March 14,2013, Jim Gaffigan was named the "King of Clean" by the Wall Street Journal.

22.

Gaffigan filmed his 2014 comedy special titled Jim Gaffigan: Obsessed at Boston's Wilbur Theater on January 18,2014.

23.

Jim Gaffigan has performed stand-up to support charitable causes as well.

24.

Jim Gaffigan performed at the 2013 Stand Up for Heroes charity event benefitting the Bob Woodruff Foundation alongside fellow stand-up comedians Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and Jon Stewart.

25.

Jim Gaffigan performed at the 2013 CNN Heroes event, which celebrates everyday heroes doing extraordinary work around the world.

26.

In May 2014, Jim Gaffigan performed at the Make It Right Gala, an organization founded by Brad Pitt, which builds sustainable homes and buildings for communities in need.

27.

Jim Gaffigan was the only comedian on the bill at the festival, and the event was visited by Pope Francis.

28.

In 2016, Jim Gaffigan embarked on his Fully Dressed Tour, performing in the United States, Canada, and the UK.

29.

Jim Gaffigan has appeared at the "Just for Laughs" comedy festival in Montreal, Quebec, numerous times.

30.

Jim Gaffigan is widely noted as an everyman and a clean comic; some of his signature routines regard Hot Pockets, cake, and bacon.

31.

One critic compared him to Full House-era Bob Saget, which Jim Gaffigan took as an insult.

32.

Jim Gaffigan has appeared in over 200 TV commercials, ranging from Rolling Rock to Saturn to Chrysler and ESPN.

33.

Jim Gaffigan's ubiquity earned him the title of 'Salesman of the Year' by BusinessWeek in 1999.

34.

Jim Gaffigan performed in a trio of Sierra Mist commercials for the 2007 Super Bowl as part of the comedy ensemble "The Mis-Takes".

35.

Jim Gaffigan appeared in an ad series for Sierra Mist alongside fellow comedian Michael Ian Black.

36.

Jim Gaffigan appeared in two movies chosen for the 2001 Sundance Film Festival: Super Troopers and 30 Years to Life.

37.

Jim Gaffigan appeared on That '70s Show, and was a regular cast member of the TBS original sitcom My Boys, which he left at the end of its third season.

38.

In 2009, Jim Gaffigan guest-starred as the best friend of Murray Hewitt in an episode of the HBO comedy series Flight of the Conchords.

39.

On June 11,2009, Jim Gaffigan appeared on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien.

40.

Jim Gaffigan was in an episode of The Daily Show as a man posing as a Daily Show correspondent who knows nothing about the show and just wants to be seen with Jon Stewart.

41.

Jim Gaffigan appeared on Broadway in That Championship Season, which opened in March 2011, opposite Brian Cox, Chris Noth, Kiefer Sutherland, and Jason Patric.

42.

Jim Gaffigan called being on Broadway "an amazing experience, really hard but really fun".

43.

Jim Gaffigan starred in Shia LaBeouf's 2013 short film Howard Cantour.

44.

The result was The Jim Gaffigan Show, a sitcom about a couple raising their five kids in a two-bedroom New York City apartment.

45.

Jim Gaffigan co-starred in the film Experimenter, a fictionalized account of the experiments of the Yale professor Stanley Milgram.

46.

Jim Gaffigan plays an actor hired to collaborate in the experiments.

47.

In February 2016, Jim Gaffigan began appearing in KFC commercials as Colonel Sanders, replacing Norm Macdonald.

48.

Since April 8,2016, Jim Gaffigan has appeared with his family in a marketing campaign for the 2017 Chrysler Pacifica.

49.

In October 2016, it was announced Jim Gaffigan would be joining the cast of the third season of the anthology drama series, Fargo.

50.

Jim Gaffigan next took on the lead role in the 2018 neo-noir film American Dreamer, which was released on September 20,2019.

51.

Jim Gaffigan portrayed George Westinghouse in Michael Almereyda's 2020 film Tesla.

52.

In 2020, Jim Gaffigan was announced to provide the voice of Thunderbolt in season two of Stargirl.

53.

In 2021, Jim Gaffigan voiced Lorenzo Paguro in the Pixar film Luca.

54.

Jim Gaffigan voiced an animated version of himself on Pale Force with Conan O'Brien from 2005 to 2008.

55.

Jim Gaffigan has voiced characters on the animated shows Bob's Burgers, Shorty McShorts' Shorts, WordGirl, Star vs the Forces of Evil, and the animated feature Duck Duck Goose.

56.

Jim Gaffigan produced a series of animated shorts for Late Night with Conan O'Brien, titled Pale Force.

57.

Jim Gaffigan was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the "25 funniest people on Twitter" in 2012.

58.

In 2013, Jim Gaffigan released Dad Is Fat, a title derived from the first complete sentence his eldest son wrote on a dry-erase board at the age of four or five.

59.

Jim Gaffigan signed with Crown Publishing in June 2013 to write a second book of comic essays.

60.

Kirkus Reviews remarked that "Jim Gaffigan somehow manages to work 'clean' without ever becoming sickeningly saccharine," and that "laughs [are] served up just right on every page".

61.

Once they married, she left behind her work with her youth theater project to devote herself to raising their expanding brood, and after a joke she wrote drew big laughs at a show, she and Jim Gaffigan began to collaborate more.

62.

Jim Gaffigan gradually transferred into the position of Jim's chief co-writer, and they are now full writing partners.

63.

Jim Gaffigan participated on the NPR radio quiz program Wait Wait.

64.

Jim Gaffigan is a regular commentator on CBS Sunday Morning, for which he won a Daytime Emmy in 2016.

65.

Jim Gaffigan is a practicing Catholic who avoids working on Sundays, though he has joked that his wife is so much more devout than him that she seems like a "Shiite Catholic" in comparison.

66.

In 2019, Jim Gaffigan apologised on social media after endorsing the "Moriori First" myth in one of his stand-up shows.

67.

Jim Gaffigan made disparaging remarks about Maori people, which were described as "offensive" and "ignorant" on New Zealand social media.