Keegan-Michael Key

Keegan-Michael Key
Key at the Peabody Awards, May 2014
Born	(1971-03-22) March 22, 1971 (age 45) Southfield, Michigan, U.S.
Education	University of Detroit Mercy (B.F.A.) Pennsylvania State University (M.F.A.)
Occupation	Actor, writer, comedian
Years active	1999–present
Spouse(s)	Cynthia Blaise (m. 1999; separated 2015)

Keegan-Michael Key (born March 22, 1971) is an American actor, writer, and comedian. He starred in the Comedy Central sketch series Key & Peele and co-stars in the USA Network comedy series Playing House. He spent six seasons as a cast member on MADtv and has made several guest appearances on Whose Line is it Anyway?. In 2014, he also starred in the first season of the FX series Fargo and the final season of the NBC series Parks and Recreation. He has had supporting roles in several films, including Let's Be Cops, Tomorrowland and Pitch Perfect 2. In 2015, Key appeared at the White House Correspondents' Dinner as the character Luther, President Barack Obama's anger translator. In 2016, he produced and starred in Keanu (2016) with his Key & Peele co-star Jordan Peele.

Key was born in Southfield, Michigan, and raised in Detroit. He was adopted as a child by Patricia Walsh and Michael Key, both social workers. His biological and adoptive fathers are both African-American, and his biological and adoptive mothers are both white; he later met his biological mother, Carrie Herr. Being biracial has been a source of comedic material for Key, who told Terry Gross in an interview for NPR, "I think the reason Jordan and I became actors is because we did a fair amount of code-switching growing up and still do." In 1989, he graduated from Shrine Catholic High School in Royal Oak, Michigan. Key attended the University of Detroit Mercy as an undergraduate and earned his Master of Fine Arts in Theater at Pennsylvania State University. While at The University of Detroit Mercy, he was a brother of Phi Kappa Theta. He later discovered the identity of his birth mother, and that he had two half-brothers who were both already deceased, one of them comic book writer Dwayne McDuffie.