Born on May 13, 1964 in Washington D.C. — the youngest of eleven children of Lorna and James William Colbert Jr. — Stephen Tyrone Colbert grew up in Charleston, South Carolina with a surname he'd later Frenchify into cole-BEAR, because, as he put it: it sounded classier. Spoiler: he was right.
His father was a physician and medical school dean at Yale, Saint Louis University, and MUSC. The family was devoutly Irish Catholic, and faith would weave through Stephen's entire life — from Sunday school teaching to Lord of the Rings obsession (yes, Tolkien is practically a religion).
Then came 1974. Stephen was ten. His father James and two of his brothers — Peter and Paul — died when Eastern Airlines Flight 212 crashed in Charlotte, North Carolina. The family was shattered. Stephen, the youngest, turned inward. He turned to books — an unlikely grief counsellor that gave him the richest imaginative life of any late-night host in television history.
He enrolled at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia to study philosophy. Philosophy! But the stage called louder. He transferred to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, earned a theater degree in 1986, and then moved to Chicago — where the Second City comedy troupe was waiting.
At Second City, he worked as Steve Carell's understudy (yes, THAT Steve Carell), was mentored by the legendary Del Close, and found his two creative soulmates: Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello. Together they'd cook up Exit 57 and the cult classic Strangers with Candy. The comedy universe had a new axis.
After a spell on The Dana Carvey Show — where he also crossed paths with Charlie Kaufman and Louis C.K. — and a brief stretch of freelance work, he landed at The Daily Show in 1997. The rest, as they say, is satirical history.
