Lewis Black
| Lewis Black | |
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Lewis Black performs as part of a USO holiday show held for the Aviano community
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| Birth name | Lewis Niles Black |
| Born |
August 30, 1948 Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S. |
| Medium | Stand-up, television, film |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Yale School of Drama |
| Years active | 1981–present |
| Genres | Satire, Political satire, News satire, Observational comedy, Black comedy, Rant |
| Subject(s) | American politics, American culture, current events, pop culture |
| Influences | George Carlin,Lenny Bruce,Richard Pryor,Lily Tomlin, Bill Hicks,Bob Newhart,Shelley Berman |
| Influenced | Dara Ó Briain,Doug Walker,Ralph Garman |
| Website | lewisblack.com |
Lewis Niles Black (born August 30, 1948) is an American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic, actor and voice actor. He is known for his angry face and his belligerent comedic style, in which he often simulates having a mental breakdown. Black's comedy routines often escalate into angry rants about history, politics, religion, or any other cultural trends. He hosted the Comedy Central series Lewis Black's Root of All Evil, and made regular appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart delivering his "Back in Black" commentary segment. When not on the road performing, he resides in Manhattan. He also maintains a residence in Chapel Hill, N.C. He is also a spokesman for the Aruba Tourism Authority, appearing in television ads that first aired in late 2009 and 2010. He was voted 51st of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time by Comedy Central in 2004; and was voted 5th in Comedy Central's Stand Up Showdown in 2008 and 11th in 2010.
Black has served as an "ambassador for voting rights" for the American Civil Liberties Union, since 2013.
Black was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Jeannette, a teacher, and Sam Black, an artist and mechanical engineer. He was raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Silver Spring, Maryland, graduating from Springbrook High School in 1966.
Black recounts in his book Nothing's Sacred that he scored highly on the math section of his SAT exam and later applied to Yale, Princeton, Brown, Amherst, Williams, and Georgetown. Every college he applied to except Georgetown rejected him, and by that point he had decided he did not want to go there, so he spent a year at University of Maryland before transferring to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, he studied playwriting and was a brother of Pi Lambda Phi International fraternity and a member of Student Congress. After graduating in 1970, he returned to Washington, where he worked at the Appalachian Regional Commission, wrote plays, and performed stand-up comedy at the Brickskeller in Dupont Circle.
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