Stephen Colbert
American comedian and writer (born 1964)
Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( kohl-BAIR; born May 13, 1964) is an American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, and television host. He is best known for hosting the Comedy Central news satire show The Colbert Report from 2005 to 2014, and the CBS late-night talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2026.
Born into a Catholic family in Washington, D.C. and raised in South Carolina, Colbert originally studied to be a dramatic actor, but became interested in improvisational theater while attending Northwestern University, where he met Second City director Del Close. Colbert first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago. Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, comedians with whom he developed the sketch comedy series Exit 57, were in his troupe. Colbert performed on The Dana Carvey Show (1996) and wrote for the show, before collaborating again with Sedaris and Dinello on the sitcom Strangers with Candy (1999–2000).
Colbert's work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show gained him wide recognition. In 2005, he left The Daily Show to host The Colbert Report. Following The Daily Show's news-parody concept, The Colbert Report was a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows including The O'Reilly Factor, in which he portrayed a caricatured version of conservative political pundits. In the first episode, he introduced the neologism truthiness, which was named Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society and Merriam Webster.
“Stephen Colbert” enters the record as american comedian and writer (born 1964). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stephen, Colbert and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q212886. VIAF identifies the subject as 1829775. The Library of Congress control number is n2002046749. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 2005, 2014 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stephen Colbert” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.