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Fred Willard (born September 18, 1939 in Shaker Heights, Ohio) is an American comedian and character actor, known for his improvisational comedy skills.

Early life

Willard was the only child of parents he describes as "not fun people". His father died unexpectedly when Fred was 11, and his new stepfather was unsympathetic towards Fred. By mutual consent, Willard was sent to military school because of discipline and fighting issues, and later attended the Virginia Military Institute, graduating with a B.A. in English. His childhood ambition was to be a professional baseball player, and he played the sport both in college and the U.S. Army, where he served for two years. After the Army, he enrolled in acting school in New York, and in due time started a comedy team with a classmate, Vic Grecco.

Career

A veteran of sketch comedy, Fred is heralded for his quick wit and improvisational expertise. His eighty appearances in sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno are indicative of his ability to transform any character into a unique comic portrayal.

Fred recently completed a sold-out run of Fred Willard: Alone At Last!, advertised as a one-man show but actually featuring a cast of 10, and received two Los Angeles Artistic Director Awards, for Best Comedy and Best Production.

He is an alumnus of The Second City and currently heads a sketch comedy workshop, The MoHo Group. He got his start performing in a comedy duo and was a founding member of the improvisational comedy group Ace Trucking Company. Fellow members of Ace included Bill Saluga, Patti Deutsch among others. He achieved wider fame as Martin Mull's impossibly dense sidekick, Jerry Hubbard, on the television shows Fernwood 2Nite, Forever Fernwood and America 2-Night that parodied the night-time talk shows of the day. Fred Willard also had a short role on Roseanne as Leon's husband.

His most recent notable work has been in Christopher Guest films, such as A Mighty Wind, where he played Mike LaFontaine, a character known for his catch phrase "Wha' happened?", Best in Show, in which he portrayed Buck Laughlin, a dog show announcer who offered up an unending stream of bad jokes and off-color comments, Waiting for Guffman where he plays Ron Albertson, a travel agent who performs in amateur stage productions with his wife, and This is Spinal Tap in which he played the Colonel on the military base where Spinal Tap play. He will appear in Guest's next film, entitled For Your Consideration. He also appeared as KVWN news director Ed Harken in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

Willard also had a recurring role as Hank MacDougall on the later seasons of CBS' Everybody Loves Raymond. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for this role in 2003, 2004, and 2005. Willard was also the host of a VH1 documentary series called Totally Obsessed about people obsessed with their hobbies.

He also was the voice of a clueless companion to a lazy robot (Martin Mull) in one episode of the series "Dexter's Laboratory", and guest-starred on the Adult Swim cartoon, Tom Goes to the Mayor.

Willard has been married for 35 years and has a 33-year-old daughter and 9-year-old grandson.

Trivia

• He is friends with actor Richard Steven Horvitz, and along with Richard is a member of the Fred Willard Players.

• Willard auditioned alongside Robert Klein for The Second City, which consisted of a nightclub manager and his employee. The audition helped the two secure the job.

• He appears as Captin Ribmanman in episode 21 of Channel Frederator, a podcast from Kansas.

• On a 2006 appearance as a guest critic on Ebert & Roeper, he credited the 1956 movie The Court Jester as inspiring him to become a comedic actor.

• Fred also starred in a short-lived political puppet show called DC Follies. It aired in syndication in the late '80s and featured puppets from Kroft.

• Alumnus of Class of 1951 of Kentucky Military Institute, Lyndon, Kentucky - and also signed author in the 1951 yearbook ("The Saber") of the senior class prophesy. Was a member of varsity baseball team, and not 12 years of age upon graduation, as listed birth year would indicate (should be 1933, not 1939).

• Fred has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno 80 different times.

• Fred's year of graduation is notably absent from VMI's main list of notable graduates. He is listed as a 1955 graduate of VMI on several VMI athletic pages.

External links

Sources

"Unscripted And Unleashed", Ben Yagoda, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 21, 2006

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