Presenting The 25 Funniest People in America. From Conan O’Brien to Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey to Craig Ferguson, let’s count down the names of the entertainers who make us laugh the hardest.
25. AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS
Burroughs’ best-selling memoir Running with Scissors — about being raised by a nutso shrink who studies his poo and rents the back shed to a pedophile — is unbelievably disturbing. And sidesplitting. At first we felt guilty giggling at his adventures with an electroshock therapy machine, but Burroughs knows that laughter is the best antidepressant. Much better than booze, which the author struggles to kick in his equally effervescent follow-up, Dry.
24. CATHERINE O’HARA
After her run on SCTV in the late ’70s, Hollywood didn’t know what to do with O’Hara. Fortunately, Christopher Guest did. In Waiting for Guffman, she and Fred Willard are tracksuit-wearing answers to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; in Best in Show, she’s a onetime floozy with a prize terrier and a torrid past; and in A Mighty Wind, O’Hara shows off a subtler comic touch, proving that humor doesn’t always mean a pie in the face.
23. SARAH SILVERMAN
The Lenny Bruce of the 21st century might be this hot, foul-mouthed, button-punching stand-up. Silverman is ruthlessly funny about topics like sex, the Holocaust, and 9/11, which may be why The Sarah Silverman Program has a permanent slot on our DVR. Oh, and if you hadn’t heard, she’s f—ing Matt Damon.
22. DAVE CHAPPELLE
The fact that Diamond Dave is all but absent from the comedic stage these days doesn’t invalidate his funny. After all, Chappelle’s revered Comedy Central show — on which the wiry comic gleefully engaged in crass T&A humor, swore like a sailor, and mocked everyone in the multiculti rainbow, confronting race in a way that is positively Pryor-esque — is still the best sketch comedy this country has seen in more than a decade. For that alone, he deserves a spot on any list like this.
21. DEMETRI MARTIN
You know what’s funny? Palindromes and anagrams. ”Shut up, Grandma,” you say, but we say shut up yourself and watch Demetri Martin work a stand-up mic. ”A drunk driver’s very dangerous. Everybody knows that. But so is a drunk backseat driver — if he’s persuasive.” The floppy-haired heir to Steven Wright won a prestigious award at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, taking him from the comedy underground to…the comedy slightly less underground.
20. DIABLO CODY
Not to be partial, but the newly minted Oscar winner showed off her comedic — and emotional — chops with her debut screenplay for Juno. Did we mention it won an Oscar?
19. CRAIG FERGUSON
Late night is the province of the mono-name. Jay! Dave! Conan! Then there’s that Scottish guy, two-name ID required: Craig Ferguson. You know, the one who can’t quite be pinned down. Since taking over CBS’ Late Late Show from Craig Kilborn in 2005, Ferguson has brought a fresh burst of energy to the format. He’s reinvented the opening monologue, doing away with most of the topical jokes and just ad-libbing about his life. Along with fresh energy, he’s brought something else — ratings. Ferguson, 45 and a brand-spanking-new U.S. Citizen, doesn’t get as much media attention as time-slot competitors Jimmy Kimmel or Conan, but with an audience of just under 2 million, the great Scot outperforms the former and has climbed within 500,000 viewers of the latter.
18. JACK BLACK
Black is an entirely new classification of human: the frenetic slacker. Before his turn as doofus band reject/inspirational teacher Dewey Finn in School of Rock, he was the Ritalin-deprived half of Tenacious D (along with his partner, Kyle Gass) and the list-obsessed record-shop shlub in High Fidelity. He is, inarguably, the coolest fusion of music and comedy since Spinal Tap. (And, if Tropic Thunder is as good as we’ve been led to believe, we’ll forgive him that whole Nacho Libre business.)
17. DAVID LETTERMAN
With a receding hairline and a jogger’s grim jowls, Dave is no one’s idea of a hip comic, and he likes it that way. New-school gone old-school, the upstart who first pumped irony into the talk show still rails against the stupidity of the powerful and yet has the charm to melt Julia Roberts.
16. AMY SEDARIS AND DAVID SEDARIS
Big brother is the best-selling author of the sublime autobiographical essay collections Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked, full of terrific riffs about stuff like his cuckoo-clock North Carolina clan and his midget guitar teacher. Little sis was the rubber-faced star of Comedy Central’s truly strange Strangers With Candy, as well as coauthor of the book Wigfield.
15. WILL FERRELL
See, there’s this man-child who latches onto Will Ferrell in most every role he plays — and good luck getting the little guy to let go. As a result, we are treated to inspired displays of dolt-trapped-in-the-headlights hijinks, be it in the form of Old School’s keghead Frank the Tank (who goes from repressed to regressed to undressed) or Talladega Nights’ Ricky Bobby, the dumbest, most earnest NASCAR driver on the circuit — who’s also the most comfortable with his sexuality.
14. RICKY GERVAIS
Okay, so he doesn’t spend all that much of his time in America. We don’t care. Whether as the creator of The Office and Extras, a supporting actor in movies like For Your Consideration or Night at the Museum, or doing killer stand-up (as seen most recently in Grand Theft Auto IV), he’s still as funny as the dog’s bollocks.
13. ELLEN DEGENERES
DeGeneres, whose career seemed all but kaput a few years ago, has earned back adoration simply by being her affably dry self on the Emmy-winning The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Whether it’s her circuitous monologues, her deadpan celebrity interviews, or that vocal turn as Dory in Finding Nemo, she remains one of the cleanest, coolest funny ladies around.
12. DAVID CROSS
All conversations about his genius start here: Along with Bob Odenkirk, he created the cunning HBO sketch series Mr. Show, which routinely put SNL to silly shame. And not only does Cross work little miracles in supporting roles (remember his role as feckless freak-job Tobias on Fox’s Arrested Development?), he can drop some pretty fearsome stand-up (who else talks about being raped by the Virgin Mary?). Simply put, this dude never kowtows for his funny.
11. CONAN O’BRIEN
Smarty-pants isn’t usually a compliment, but O’Brien wears them so well. When this Harvard geek isn’t riffing on Muammar Gaddafi in his monologue, he’s making absurd innovations in low-brow comedy. Now, let’s see if those absurd innovations will play on The Tonight Show….
The Saturday Night Live scene-stealer has found her stride in her third season, thanks to breakout characters like the Target clerk and the obsessively competitive Penelope, as well as spot-on impressions of Jamie Lee Curtis and Suze Orman.
9. LARRY DAVID
Because he’s a balding, neurotic, self-consumed, multimillionaire malcontent who reacts to most social interactions as if he just took a whiff of some really bad cheese. Because the only thing he hates more than these situations is himself. Because he’s the most hilariously doomed white-guy antihero we’ve ever seen, and has no problems taking on every sacred cow. Because we have no idea how much of this Larry David — from the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm — is swiped from the real Larry David. And because both Larry Davids co-created one of the best comedies ever, Seinfeld.
8. AMY POEHLER AND WILL ARNETT
The funniest married couple on the list. (Sorry, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann.) When they’re apart (she, on Saturday Night Live and in Baby Mama; he, late of Arrested Development and currently guesting on 30 Rock), they’re great. But when they’re together, as when they played brother-and sister figure skaters in Blades of Glory, they’re resplendent. So let’s get those crazy kids together more often, shall we?
7. MATT STONE AND TREY PARKER
Now in their eleventh season of South Park, these potty mouths with a purpose continue to remind us what full creative control gets you: moments so wrong, they’re right (Ben Affleck falling in love with Cartman’s hand comes to mind). Added bonus: The ninth season episode, ”Trapped in the Closet” contains the most sober explanation of the background of Scientology you’ll ever hear.
6. CHRIS ROCK
Television failed him (Saturday Night Live didn’t know what to do with his bright-bulb humor, and his HBO talk show couldn’t contain him). The movies didn’t get him (though this is as much Rock’s fault as anyone’s, given he wrote and directed his most recent starring vehicles, the underperforming Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife). But on the stage, Rock is a man on a mission, mercilessly tackling race, religion, money, and relationships. And his missionaries are legion.
5. STEVE CARELL
Sometimes, it hurts so good. The pain, the discomfort, the agony of watching Carell’s Michael Scott work himself into another awkward scenario on NBC’s The Office…and almost work himself out. And the fact that we don’t hate Michael — on the contrary, we feel a warm, chocolatey pity for him — is a testament to Carell, who leavens the bald incompetence with wide-eyed awe.
4. JON STEWART AND THE ‘DAILY SHOW’ TEAM
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the most consistent laugh machine on TV — and the only news source for scores of cynics and slackers. It’s not often that a comedy show can tackle politics, embrace a cogent point of view, and still maintain its anarchic spark. The scribes at The Daily Show pull it off four nights a week. As the heart and soul of the show, Stewart is evenhanded but never meek; as an interviewer, he can make his guests comfortable even as he’s taking them apart. Then there’s his gang of ”correspondents,” who soldier straight-facedly into the great American absurd and take no prisoners. Empirically speaking, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on in the world right now. Yet here we are each week, chortling.
3. TINA FEY
It takes a certain self-confidence to play a woman who accidentally dates her third cousin, erroneously assumes her neighbor is a terrorist, and gets called the C-word by a colleague (especially when said character is based on you). ”I love going to those uncomfortable places,” says Fey, who stars as 30 Rock’s workaholic TV maven and is also the NBC show’s creator and exec producer. ”I’ll go down any weird avenue.” Maybe this year’s surprise Emmy win for best comedy will empower Fey to pursue some dreams for her alter ego. ”Liz Lemon could do an international adoption for a Russian baby and get the paperwork wrong with the European dates and somehow end up with a huge, muscular 13-year-old. Yeah, I could see that.” Hopefully we will too.
2. STEPHEN COLBERT AND THE ‘COLBERT REPORT’ TEAM
The once (and, we’re sure, future) presidential nominee, author, and dedicated windbag also happens to be one of the smartest satirists working today. Heck, if all the dude had on his resume was the legendary 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, he’d go down in comedy history. But week-in and week-out, Colbert takes aim at the political-industrial complex — and I don’t care if there’s no such term — and spins the facts into truth. Or truthiness. Whichever’s easier.
1. THE JUDD APATOW POSSE
Can you even remember what movie comedy looked like before writer-director-producer Judd Apatow and his ever-expanding comedy clan (including Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, and Paul Rudd) came along last summer with two stiff shots of cathartic humor — the oops-she’s-preggers romp Knocked Up and the high school raunchfest Superbad? Today, when studio execs have a comedy that feels flat or formulaic, the call goes out to ”Judd it up” — sweet irony for a man once best known for critically beloved flops like TV’s Freaks and Geeks. ”It was always my dream to become a verb,” Apatow deadpans. ”That’s what I wrote in my high school yearbook.”
Hayden Panettiere would rather stay home than get mobbed by fans.
Heroes actress Hayden Panettiere has confessed becoming a mega-star has turned her into a virtual recluse.
‘I don’t ever go out,’ she says, of her life in Hollywood, where she drives everywhere to avoid being recognised on the street. ‘I stay at home. I go from garage to garage, and keep myself out of sight.’ The 18-year-old, who has been catapulted into the A-list since taking on the role of cheerleader Claire Bennet in the top-rated US drama, admits she finds being famous ‘a pain in the ass’.
‘I love where I live and that I have wonderful friends there and I love what I do, but it really has a major impact on your life. This business is very intrusive. People want to know what you’re doing every day, and it becomes less about your craft and your art, and your love for acting, than it is about when you put food in your mouth, or when you’re walking your dog.’
Hayden has been in the industry since she was a mere 11 months old, when her mother Lesley – a former soap actress – got her cast in the first of more than 50 adverts. Hayden herself starred in the US daytime soap One Life To Live from ages four to eight, and, now that Heroes has made her a Hollywood A-lister, her next move is to set the big screen alight, having just filmed Fireflies In The Garden with Julia Roberts.
And it seems the teenage star is in no danger of following the likes of Lindsay Lohan into being more famous for misdemeanours than movies – in fact, she is scathing of Hollywood stars who are more concerned with being celebrities than they are with being actors. ‘The interesting thing to me is, if you think about it, the glamour of Hollywood has been dimmed down by people that don’t necessarily love what they do or their craft,’ she says. ‘I think people who are mainly in the public eye and deal with this [attention], a lot of them like it and enjoy it. I don’t really enjoy going out, it’s a nightmare in my opinion.’
On That cheerleader’s body…
‘I don’t have a model’s body. I’m not obsessed like some girls who go crazy. I’m happy with what I’ve got, it suits me fine. I have a personal trainer or I’d never get my ass into the gym, I’d probably be asleep instead. I have to pass as a superhero and you have to be careful of those widescreen TVs, too.’
What she wants in a man
‘I like somebody who is confident and independent, and obviously it helps if they’re secure in themselves. Because sometimes in my job, I obviously have to make out with hot men, so a good sense of humour helps to deal with this!’
I’d dog her for whining about the down side of celebrity, or going on and on about her “craft,” because that kind of thing generally annoys the crap out of me. But she seems like a sweet girl, so I’ll let her off with a warning this time.
And, no, that photo of Hayden in a bikini really doesn’t have anything to do with the story. What’s your point?
Source: “Hayden Panettiere: Hollywood success has made me a recluse” [Sunday Mirror] via WeSmirch
Remember the days when Julia Roberts a happy-go-lucky hooker with a heart of gold? Yes, Pretty Woman. Those were the good days. Then she landed a few woman with a heart of gold movies and went all A-list snob on us.
Regardless of her current smug status she made turning tricks look like a Cinderella story. Nothing better than some hot chocolate and your favorite whore turned princess with amazing hair to take the sting out of your Sunday. Julia landed number one in a poll of Hollywood’s favorite hookers.
Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance in Last Exit to Brooklyn followed in the silver position. Her cotton candy hair probably did her in. That and her whore name is Tralala.
Birthday present to Christian Slater in True Romance, Patricia Arquette, took third place. Equally bad hooker name…Alabama. Dermot Mulroney should have taken first place for having to share the screen with Debra Messing. He ended up in fourth place for The Wedding Date. Now in L.A. Confidential, Kim Basinger pulls a Veronica Lake and that alone earned her a fifth place in the poll and an Oscar.
Hooker Oscars are a dime a dozen these days. I think I have a couple being used as paper weights and paper towel holders.
The raunchy sex scene in Charlie Wilson’s ‘War’ sees British actress Emily Blunt crawling over the Oscar-winning star, Tom Hanks and she admits that she enjoyed it.
“It was hot. It was surreal!” she says. “And embarrassing because it’s just you with your t**s hanging out, and you always hope the lighting’s nice.
But Tom is really sexy. I promise you! He just made it effortless, to do those scenes. And he was so protective of me. He’s a real gent.”
But she feels that 51-year-old Tom might have been less comfortable getting hot and heavy with a 24-year-old. Somehow I doubt this.
“Maybe it was weird for him, because I could be his daughter and I’m friends with his son Colin,” she reveals.
“Also because Tom Hanks is not known for these kinds of scenes, for being that kind of guy - and Charlie Wilson was a massive player, he was really promiscuous. And sexy!”
Julia Roberts was angry that some photographers were taking pictures near her kids’ school, so she engaged in a high speed chase in her Mercedes, driving in the wrong lane and putting other people in danger.
Silver-screen sprite Julia Roberts is fed up with intrusive paparazzi, and she’s letting them know it. The slightly built star who played Tinkerbell in “Hook” was videotaped Wednesday in Malibu wildly tailing two videographers, flagging them down and lecturing them for taping her near a school.
The footage, taken by freelance videographers for the celebrity news and photo agency Splash and broadcast by “Inside Edition,” shows Roberts driving in a Mercedes SUV behind the men, honking and waving them to stop.
“I’m going to talk to you about the fact that you’re at a school where children go. Turn it off,” Roberts, 40, said in the footage, standing outside their car and pointing at the videographers after they pulled over.
While driving, the Oscar-winning star of “Erin Brockovich” crossed over a double yellow line, and did not have children in her car, Splash media sales representative Amy Wiwuga told The Associated Press on Friday.
Wiwuga would not reveal the videographers’ identities, citing the agency’s policy on freelancers.
Calls to Roberts’ New York-based publicist Marcy Engleman were not immediately returned Friday.
Roberts has 2-year-old twins and an almost 6-month-old son with her husband, cinematographer Danny Moder.
The TV show “Extra” reported that the incident occurred after Roberts was followed to her children’s school. Roberts told the program that taking her picture is one thing, but a school is “not the place to wait to do it.”
Roberts was the second A-list celebrity in two weeks to be videotaped admonishing the paparazzi on the road. A video clip posted on TMZ.com showed actor George Clooney riding his motorcycle Nov. 16 in Los Angeles, then pulling off to the side of a street, telling photographers: “You can drive all you want, you can take my picture all you want, but what you cannot do is put people in danger.”
Usually it’s the paps who hunt celebs, but yesterday, Julia Roberts was on the chase in L.A., driving on the wrong side of the road as she went after a photog!
Once they stopped, an irate Julia got out of her car and gave the pap the George Clooney treatment, scolding him for trying to snap pics of her children. Roberts demanded that the photog turn his camera off — and he nervously obliged
It’s not right that celebrities got stalked by these jerks. At the same time, though, being a celebrity doesn’t give you the right to drive like some idiot and confront them, either.
I’ve never been run off the road to be lectured by a sanctimonious Hollywood actress who was swerving between lanes moments before, but if I did, I hope I would handle myself better than this dude. Especially if that actress is Julia Roberts. She looks like a horse, and westerns tell me that you’re supposed to kick horses in the ribs when you want them to do something. So, if you ever want Julia Roberts to shut up, I’d suggest probably starting with that.
Daily Blabber’s Tracy also makes fun of the guy but thinks Roberts was all class:
The best part of the video is how nervous the guy is. As he’s pulling over, and Julia is storming the car, you can here him fretting and breathing nervously. He obviously knows she’s one tough cookie. I have to say, though, both Julia and George were fairly polite in their demands. No bad words, no threats, just simply telling the paps to stop endangering the people around them. Love ‘em.
Daily Dish thinks Roberts “lost her temper” but doesn’t comment on the driving.
mattchew at ONTD (who just hit the 100 million hits mark!) says, “OMG, I don’t know why but this made me laugh so much. Bitch is crazy!”
Sources: “Video: Julia Roberts chases paparazzi” (AP/Yahoo) and “Julia Roberts — America’s Pissed-Off Sweetheart” (TMZ)
Heroes actress Hayden Panettiere has confessed becoming a mega-star has turned her into a virtual recluse.
“It was hot. It was surreal!” she says. “And embarrassing because it’s just you with your t**s hanging out, and you always hope the lighting’s nice.
