Mike Myers

Mike Myers

Active - 1970 - 2022  |   Born - May 25, 1963 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada  |   Genres - Comedy, Drama, Adventure

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Biography by AllMovie

Emmy-winning comic actor Mike Myers seemed destined by fate to link up with Saturday Night Live; when he made his television debut as a commercial actor at age eight, his co-star (playing his mother) was pre-SNL Gilda Radner. Working steadily in his native Canada, Myers was a member of Toronto's Second City troupe, the star of his own TV series Mullarkey and Myers at age 20, and the vee-jay of an all-night Canadian music video show in 1987. In all of these career stepping stones, Myers continued testing out the comic characterizations which would win him fame in his SNL days. His most popular character (which he'd been doing at parties since high school) was spacey teenage couch potato Wayne Campbell, who, with equally airheaded best friend Garth Algar (Dana Carvey), hosted the Aurora, IL, cable-access series Wayne's World. This SNL skit begat a popular like-titled film in 1992, and a less popular 1993 sequel. Despite the tepid response to Wayne's World 2, Mike Myers as Wayne seemed to be more readily acceptable to film fans than Mike Myers as anyone else, as shown by the disappointing 1993 comedy So I Married an Axe Murderer.

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Factsheet

  • Appeared in commercials as a child; played Gilda Radner's son in a British Columbia Hydroelectric ad at age 10.
  • In the eighth grade, wrote an essay about Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels.
  • Joined the Second City comedy troupe right after high school.
  • Named and modeled his Saturday Night Live "Coffee Talk" character Linda Richman after his then mother-in-law.
  • Was inspired to create Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery after hearing Burt Bacharach's "The Look of Love" on the radio. Wrote the script in three weeks.
  • Originally voiced Shrek with a Canadian accent before trying a Scottish brogue that "just felt right."
  • Awarded a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame; and has a street named after him (Mike Myers Drive) in Scarborough, Ontario.