Stephen Colbert was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Charleston, South Carolina on James Island, the youngest of eleven children in an Irish Catholic family.The Colbert children, in order from oldest to youngest, are Jimmy, Eddie, Mary, Billy, Margo, Tommy, Jay, Lulu, Paul, Peter and Stephen.
His father, James Colbert, was the vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina. His mother, Lorna Colbert, was a homemaker. In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as devout people who also strongly valued intellectualism and taught their children that it was possible to question the Church and still be Catholic. The emphasis his family placed on intelligence and his observation of negative stereotypes of Southerners led Colbert to train himself to suppress his Southern accent while he was still quite young. As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television; to avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors.
Colbert sometimes comedically claims his surname is French, but his family is actually of Irish descent. Originally, the name was pronounced [ˈkoʊɫ.bɚt]; Stephen Colbert's father, James, wanted to pronounce the name [koʊɫˈbεɹ], but maintained the [ˈkoʊɫ.bɚt] pronunciation out of respect for his own father (Stephen's grandfather). However, James offered his children the option to pronounce the name whichever way they preferred. Stephen started using [koʊɫˈbεɹ] later in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Stephen's brother Ed, an intellectual property attorney, retained the [ˈkoʊɫ.bɚt] pronunciation; this was shown in a February 12, 2009 appearance on The Colbert Report, when his youngest brother asked him, "[koʊɫˈbεɹ] or [ˈkoʊɫ.bɚt]?" Ed responded "[ˈkoʊɫ.bɚt]", to which Stephen jokingly replied, "See you in Hell."
On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, were killed in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. Shortly thereafter, Lorna Colbert relocated the family downtown to the more urban environment of East Bay Street in Charleston. By his own account, Colbert found the transition difficult and did not easily make new friends in his new neighborhood. Colbert later described himself during this time as detached, lacking a sense of importance regarding the things with which other children concerned themselves. He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he also developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, a pastime which he later characterized as an early experience in acting and improvisation.
Colbert attended Charleston's Episcopal Porter-Gaud School, where he participated in several school plays and contributed to the school newspaper but, by his own assessment, was not highly motivated academically. During his time as a teenager, he also briefly fronted a Rolling Stones cover band. When he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a severely perforated eardrum caused him inner ear damage. The damage was severe enough that he was unable to pursue a career that would involve scuba diving. The damage also left him deaf in his right ear. For a while, he was uncertain whether he would attend college, but ultimately he applied and was accepted to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where a friend had also enrolled. There he continued to participate in plays while studying mainly philosophy; he found the curriculum rigorous but was more focused than he had been in high school and was able to apply himself to his studies. Despite the lack of a significant theater community at Hampden-Sydney, Colbert's interest in acting escalated during this time. After two years, he transferred to Northwestern University's School of Communication to study performance, emboldened by the realization that he loved performing even when no one was coming to shows.
Stephen Colbert started his career in comedy by joining the reknowned Second City improv group in Chicago. There he met actress/comedian Amy Sedaris (sister of author and NPR favorite David Sedaris ) and comic Paul Dinello . Together, they developed the short-lived (but critically acclaimed) HBO sketch comedy series Exit 57 , which won five Cable ACE awards in 1995 for best writing, performing, and comedy series.
In 1996, he was hired to write and perform sketches for The Dana Carvey Show (aka the "Mug Root Beer" Dana Carvey Show , aka the "Taco Bell" Dana Carvey Show ). This was also a short-lived endeavor, but Colbert stood out as a Phil Hartman -like everyman capable of exuding both exuberance and despair in a single take. From there, he worked with Robert Smigel as the voice of Ace for Saturday Night Live's animated shorts Ace & Gary: The Ambiguously Gay Duo . Colbert has also contributed his vocal talents as Reducto and Phil Ken Sebben on Adult Swim's Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law and several characters on Crank Yankers .
Colbert, Sedaris and Dinello struck a collaboration again in 1999, and developed Strangers With Candy for Comedy Central. Colbert has one dramatic role to his credit: on an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent he portrayed an antiquarian document forger who lives with his crazy mother. The storyline for this episode appears to be "ripped" nearly frame by frame from an episode of CourtTV's Masterminds .
Since 1997, Stephen Colbert has been best known as a fake senior correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . He worked alongside Steve Carell , who does the voice for Gary, the other half of the aforementioned Ambiguously Gay Duo . Colbert left the Daily Show in 2005 to create the spinoff The Colbert Report , satrizing the self-obsessed, hardboiled news commentators on Fox News and CNN. On 29 April 2006, Colbert was invited to speak at the annual White House Press Corps awards dinner, using the event to skewer both the assembled journalists and the attending politicians, among them sitting President George W. Bush .