| Paul Reiser | |
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Reiser in April 2011 |
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| Born | March 30, 1957 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actor, comedian, author, screenwriter, musician |
| Years active | 1982–present |
Paul Reiser (born March 30, 1957) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, television personality, author, screenwriter and musician. He is most widely known for his role on the long-running television sitcom Mad About You.
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Reiser was born in New York City, the son of Helen, a homemaker, and Sam Reiser, a wholesale health food distributor.[1] Reiser attended the East Side Hebrew Institute on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City.[2] He earned his bachelor's degree at Binghamton University, where he majored in music (piano, composition). He was active in campus theater productions and founded "The Little Theater That Could", an on-campus community theater organization located in Hinman College, Reiser's dorm community. It was later renamed Hinman Production Company.[3] Reiser eventually found his calling when he performed in New York City comedy clubs during university summer breaks.
After honing his skills as a stand-up comic in New York City, he had a breakout film role in 1982 when he appeared in Diner, a coming-of-age film by Barry Levinson. Reiser's character, Modell, a closet stand-up comedian, effectively brought Reiser's comic abilities to the attention of Hollywood. The film also helped boost the careers of his co-stars Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, and Mickey Rourke. He followed this success playing a detective in 1984's Beverly Hills Cop, a role he reprised in the 1987 sequel, Beverly Hills Cop II. Reiser also had roles in James Cameron's 1986 movie Aliens where he played the infamous character Burke; in The Marrying Man (1991), and in the comedy Bye Bye Love (1995).
Reiser starred for two years on television as one of two possible fathers of a teenage girl in the sitcom My Two Dads, and later rose to fame in North America as Paul Buchman on Mad About You, a long-running comedy series he helped create in which Helen Hunt co-starred as his wife. He also played piano for the recording of the show's theme song. For his work in Mad About You, Reiser received nominations for an Emmy, a Golden Globe, an American Comedy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild award. In the successful show's final 1999 season, he and Hunt were paid US $1 million ($1.3 million today) per episode.[4] In 2001, Reiser took on a dramatic role as a man desperate to find his birth mother after learning he has a serious illness in the British television movie My Beautiful Son.
Reiser has also written three books: Couplehood, about the ups and downs of being in a committed relationship; Babyhood, about his experiences as a first-time father; and Familyhood, a collection of humorous essays. Couplehood was unique in the fact it started on page 145. Reiser explained this as his way of giving the reader a false sense of accomplishment. Both books appeared on The New York Times bestseller list. In May 1996, Reiser appeared on Late Show with David Letterman in the middle of writing his second book. Since he didn't have a title yet (it would later be called Babyhood), he showed a prop book with the same cover as his first book Couplehood. The title was simply called Book, a name Whoopi Goldberg used for her 1997 publication. Familyhood was released in May 2011.
In 2002, Reiser made a guest appearance as himself on Larry David's critically acclaimed HBO sitcom, Curb Your Enthusiasm.[5]
Reiser placed number 78 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.
The name of Reiser's production company - Nuance Productions - comes from one of his lines in the film, Diner, explaining his discomfort with the word nuance.
Reiser wrote and starred in the semi-autobiographical comedy series The Paul Reiser Show, which aired on NBC as a midseason replacement during the 2010-11 television season.[6] "This is nice", quipped Reiser on the Stephanie Miller radio program, "because you get to sit around and root for other shows to fail." Ironically, due to extremely low ratings, Reiser's own show was canceled after two episodes.[7]
Reiser married Paula Ravets on 21 August 1988 and they have two children: Ezra Samuel (born September 1995) and Leon (born 2000).