14 Facts About Lorne Michaels

1. Lorne Michaels was born on Lorne David Lipowitz; November 17, 1944 and is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, film and television producer and screenwriter best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live, The Kids in the Hall (from 1989 to 1995 and and The Tonight Show (since 2014).

2. Lorne Michaels graduated from University College, Toronto, where he majored in English, in 1966.

3. Lorne Michaels began his career as a writer and broadcaster for CBC Radio.

4. Lorne Michaels starred with Hart Pomerantz in The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour, a series of comedy specials that ran on CBC in the early 1970s.

5. In 1975, Lorne Michaels created the TV show NBC's Saturday Night, which in 1977 changed its name to Saturday Night Live (initially there was a name conflict with an ABC show titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, which debuted September 20, 1975, and was cancelled on January 17, 1976).

6. Lorne Michaels's appeared in a sketch about underage drinking when Zac Efron hosted the show.

7. Lorne Michaels founded the production company Broadway Video in 1979, which has produced SNL since 1981 as well as other shows such as Canadian sketch-comedy The Kids in the Hall which began airing in 1988 on CBC in Canada, debuting in the US market in 1989 on cable television network HBO until moving to CBS in 1993.

8. Lorne Michaels is the executive producer of the NBC show Late Night, and was the executive producer of 30 Rock and Up All Night during their runs.

9. Lorne Michaels became a US citizen in 1987 and was inducted into the Order of Canada in 2002.

10. In 1999, Lorne Michaels was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

11. Lorne Michaels received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement in 2006, Canada's highest honor in the performing arts.

12. In 2012, Lorne Michaels was awarded a rare Personal Peabody Award.

13. Lorne Michaels accepted at a ceremony in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel.

14. In December 2021, Lorne Michaels was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors, along with Justino Diaz, Berry Gordy, Bette Midler, and Joni Mitchell.