Jerry Seinfeld

Born: April 29 1954
Where: Brooklyn, New York, USA

The critically-acclaimed observational comedian is best known for playing a semi-fictionalised version of himself in the Grammy-winning sitcom Seinfeld.

He made his first foray into film as the writer, producer and voice of Barry B Benson in the lauded computer animated comedy Bee Movie.

Of Hungarian Jewish and Syrian Jewish descent, he grew up in Massapequa, New York and attended Bircherine Lanelyn Elementary School and Massapequa High School.

In 1970, while aged 16, he spent a short time on an Israeli kibbutz before attending the State University of New York (he transferred and graduated from City University of New York).

During his college he was an amateur wrestler - The Jewish Terror - and also worked a sideline selling discounted "Thai sticks".

He developed an interest in stand-up comedy after brief stints in college productions and tried out at an open mic night at New York City's Catch a Rising Star in 1976.

(his mother and sister always insisted he would never be as funny as his father, a commercial sign-maker).

He subsequently appeared in a Rodney Dangerfield HBO special and landed a small recurring role as Frankie, a mail delivery boy who had comedy routines that no one wanted to hear, on the Benson sitcom in 1979. He was abruptly fired from the show.

In 1981, he made a highly successful appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and became a regular on similar shows, including Late Night with David Letterman and The Merv Griffin Show.

Seinfeld created The Seinfeld Chronicles with Larry David in 1989 for NBC (the show was later renamed Seinfeld to avoid confusion with the short-lived teen sitcom The Marshall Chronicles).

Despite executive fears it was "too Jewish", the show - featuring Seinfeld playing a caricature of himself - had become the most popular and successful sitcom on American television and was finally taken off air in 1998.

(75 million American viewers tuned into the last episode of the show, which rivalled M*A*S*H* as the biggest television farewell).

He returned to stand-up comedy instead of pursuing a film career and recorded a comedy special - I'm Telling You for the Last Time.

In 2004, he also appeared in two Barry Levinson-directed commercial webisodes promoting American Express, entitled The Adventures Of Seinfeld And Superman.

Off-screen, he is also a bestselling author with Seinlanguage - an adaptation of his stand-up material - heading the New York Times bestseller list.

In 2003 a chance pun during dinner about making a B-Movie - or Bee Movie - was picked up by guest Steven Spielberg who encouraged him to expand on the story of an errant drone.

In 2007, Seinfeld co-produced, co-wrote and starred as Barry B. Benson alongside Renne Zellwegger and Chris Rock in the animated Bee Movie.