James Christopher Gaffigan (born July 7, 1966) is an eight-time Grammy nominated American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He is a two-time New York Times best-selling author, three-time Emmy winning performer and multiplatinum-selling recording artist. In 2025, Billboard named Gaffigan's tour as one of "The Top 10 Highest Grossing Comedy Tours" of the year.
Gaffigan is known for his unique brand of humor, which often addresses fatherhood, laziness, food, religion, and general observations. He is regarded as a "clean" comic, using little profanity in his routines, although he does use it from time to time. He has released thirteen successful long-form comedy specials.
Gaffigan is also an actor, appearing in comedic and dramatic roles in film, television and on Broadway. He is married to actress, producer and writer Jeannie Gaffigan, with whom he has five children.
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Early life
Gaffigan was born on July 7, 1966, in Elgin, Illinois. He is the youngest of six children, born to charity worker and fundraiser Marcia Miriam (née Mitchell) and banker Michael Ambrose Gaffigan. Of Irish descent, his family's surname was Gavahan. His maternal grandfather was Iowa Supreme Court Justice Richard F. Mitchell. Gaffigan was raised in Chesterton in Northwest Indiana, a region that he has stated influenced his comedy because of its authenticity, and often jokes about growing up in a large family. His mother was accomplished at needlework and received a national award for original design and craftsmanship from the American Needlepoint Guild in 1985. She died of cancer in 1990 at age 53.
Gaffigan's father was the president and CEO of the Mercantile National Bank of Indiana for 15 years until his retirement in 1991. A former seminarian, he was also actively involved in local charity work. He died of lung cancer in 1999. Gaffigan's father was the first in his family to attend college, and encouraged his children to seek careers that promised job security. However, at about the age of five, Gaffigan announced that he wanted to be an actress unaware that it was the female noun for the occupation.
As a teenager, Gaffigan watched Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman. He attended La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana, where he played on the school's football team. He attended Purdue University for one year, where he was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, before transferring to Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, where he graduated in 1988 with a degree in finance. Although he "hated" studying finance, he worked as a litigation consultant for a short time after graduating and "was horrible at it". He played football at Georgetown and Purdue.
Career
Stand-up
Gaffigan moved to New York in 1990 to work in advertising, initially as an assistant account executive before switching to copywriting. A co-worker encouraged him to take an improv class to deal with fears surrounding public speaking. His stand-up career launched after a friend from his improv class dared him to take a stand-up seminar that required a live set at the end. Gaffigan fell in love with stand-up, and began playing comedy clubs nightly. At the start of his career, Gaffigan worked a full-time day job, took acting classes at night, and did stand-up until the early hours of the morning. He was often found sleeping at his day job; his boss had to wake him up to fire him. For the first couple years of Gaffigan's stand-up career, he tried various styles, ranging from angry comedy to impressions and voices. After auditioning for The Late Show with David Letterman for six years, Gaffigan booked a spot on the show, did a successful stand-up routine on the show in 1999, and his career took off.
In October 2005, Gaffigan filmed his first hour-long comedy special for Comedy Central that aired the following January, and became the comedy album/DVD Beyond the Pale. The special/album/DVD included material regarding food and American eating habits; the comedian unknowingly predicted a future menu item at Dunkin' Donuts—the "glazed donut breakfast sandwich"—while commenting on the future of America's eating habits.
His 2009 album King Baby was also a television special for Comedy Central filmed in Austin, Texas.
On February 25, 2012, Gaffigan taped a one-hour stand-up special—Mr. Universe—at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C.; it was nominated for a Grammy. He announced that, based on the business model used by Louis C.K.'s Live at the Beacon Theater, Mr. Universe would be available online through his website for $5, with 20% of the total proceeds going to the Bob Woodruff Foundation, an organization that provides support to military veterans. In 2012, he was among the top-ten grossing comics in the US, according to Pollstar. In 2014, Gaffigan was named the "King of Clean" by the Wall Street Journal.
Gaffigan filmed his 2014 comedy special titled Jim Gaffigan: Obsessed at Boston's Wilbur Theater on January 18, 2014. Obsessed premiered on Comedy Central on April 27 becoming the most watched stand-up comedy special of the year for the network. The accompanying album, also titled Obsessed, debuted at number 11 on the Billboard 200 and number 1 on the Billboard Comedy Album charts. 2015 saw him embark on a headlining tour, culminating in a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.
Acting
Gaffigan earned the nickname "King of Sundance" in 2019 when three of his feature films (Troop Zero, Them That Follow, and Light From Light) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Gaffigan appeared in two movies chosen for the 2001 Sundance Film Festival: Super Troopers and 30 Years to Life. In 2023, Gaffigan was on the Sundance Film Festival Jury.
Gaffigan appeared in the Sam Mendes–directed dramedy Away We Go and the teen comedy 17 Again. Gaffigan starred in Shia LaBeouf's 2013 short film Howard Cantour.com, the content of which was later revealed to be mostly plagiarized from Daniel Clowes's 2007 graphic novella Justin M. Damiano. Reflecting on the incident in an interview for The Daily Beast, Gaffigan said, "There's no greater sin in the stand-up world than thievery...So you do not want to be associated with thievery," but added, "I don't have any hard feelings about it because I don't think people think I had anything to do with it." In 2008, he appeared in the movie The Love Guru starring Mike Myers.
Gaffigan co-starred in the film Experimenter, a fictionalized account of the experiments of the Yale professor Stanley Milgram. Gaffigan plays an actor hired to collaborate in the experiments.Gaffigan portrayed George Westinghouse in Michael Almereyda's 2020 film Tesla.
In 2018, he portrayed Paul Markham in the biographical drama Chappaquiddick, starring Jason Clarke and Kate Mara, to positive reviews. Gaffigan next took on the lead role in the 2018 neo-noir film American Dreamer, which was released on September 20, 2019. Gaffigan's dark portrayal of a broken man driven to desperate actions was very well received by critics, with the Chicago Sun-Times review calling it "a career-best dramatic performance" by Gaffigan.
In January 2021, he joined the cast of Disney's Peter Pan & Wendy as Mr. Smee directed by David Lowery. Lowery produced Light from Light and also directed Gaffigan in the animated short film, An Almost Christmas Story.
Gaffigan co-starred in Colin West's Linoleum which Vulture placed on its Best Movies of 2023 list. Gaffigan was reunited with director Colin West on the film Outside of Cleveland, with Alex Wolff and Sarah Wayne Callies.
Writing
Gaffigan's humorous quips have earned him over two and a half million followers on Twitter. He was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the "25 funniest people on Twitter" in 2012.
Gaffigan's books of essays 2013's Dad is Fat and 2014's Food: A Love Story were published by Crown Publishers and reached the New York Times Best Seller List.
The tile Dad Is Fat, was derived from the first complete sentence his eldest son wrote on a dry-erase board at the age of four or five. "He showed it to me," Gaffigan recalled in an interview, "and I laughed, and then I put him up for adoption." The book is a collection of essays dealing with the raising of his children, as well as reminiscences from his own childhood. In support of the volume, he appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition, ABC's The View, and MSNBC's Morning Joe, spoke at BEA in New York, and embarked on a nine-stop bus tour that ended on Father's Day. Dad is Fat debuted at number five on The New York Times Best Seller list, remaining on the list for three months. Regarding the audiobook, which Gaffigan read, Audiofile said his "performance strikes the right balance between his near-deadpan comedy delivery and the energy needed to keep a beleaguered parent engaged".
Gaffigan signed with Crown Publishing in June 2013 to write a second book of comic essays. The book, Food: A Love Story, was released in Fall 2014. Publishers Weekly said the book "packs plenty of laughs". Kirkus Reviews remarked that "Gaffigan somehow manages to work 'clean' without ever becoming sickeningly saccharine," and that "laughs [are] served up just right on every page". Of the accompanying audiobook, the Library Journal said, "The witty commentary is peppered with jokes and funny stories that will have listeners smiling throughout and occasionally laughing out loud."
Gaffigan contributed short humorous commentaries to the CBS Sunday Morning show, which earned Gaffigan three Emmy awards. These commentaries mainly addressed parenting and slice of life topics. Gaffigan's columns and style was often compared favoriably to Andy Rooney's 60 Minutes commentaries.
Gaffigan sometimes writes with his wife, Jeannie Gaffigan. Prior to meeting his wife, actress Jeannie Noth, Gaffigan largely wrote alone. However, while working on his first show, Welcome to New York, he was overwhelmed and asked for input from her (then his girlfriend). Although initially hesitant to have a collaborator, as their relationship grew, so did Noth's ability to write material for him. Once they married, she left behind her work with her youth theater project (Shakespeare on the Playground) to devote herself to raising their expanding brood, and after a joke she wrote drew big laughs at a show, she and Jim began to collaborate more. She gradually transferred into the position of writing partners on select projects. She has been a credited writer and/or executive producer on some comedy specials, including his two books and television show. He also credits her with "coaching" him through his performance in That Championship Season.
Fathertime Bourbon
In 2024, Gaffigan launched his own bourbon whiskey company, Fathertime Bourbon, with his college friend, Stu Pollard. Named for the "occasional brief period of peace and reflection every hardworking father earns" with a label that features Gaffigan's paternal grandfather, Fathertime is a high-rye expression. Fathertime Bourbon has received many accolades and won the Best New Bourbon award in the 2026 San Francisco World Spirits competition. Gaffigan is heavily involved in every aspect of the Fathertime business, including sampling and choosing all the barrels that eventually get bottled.
Personal life
Gaffigan married actress Jeannie Gaffigan (née Noth) in 2003. They have two daughters and three sons. All children were home births in their two bedroom apartment in New York City. His oldest child, Marre, was born on May 2, 2004. The second child, Jack, was born on November 27, 2005. Their third child, Katie Louise, was born on May 10, 2009. Their fourth child, Michael, was born on June 19, 2011. Their youngest child, Patrick was born on September 27, 2012. The family of seven lived in a two-bedroom apartment in the Manhattan borough of New York City before moving to a larger Manhattan apartment in 2015.
To stay connected to his family, Gaffigan tries to "maintain bedtime rituals while working in the city". When on tour, he reportedly often takes his family with him. His son, Jack, has opened for his father's shows on occasion.
Gaffigan is a practicing Catholic and has said he avoids working on Sundays, though he has joked that his wife is so much more devout than him that she seems like a "Shiite Catholic" in comparison. He and his family attend Mass at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in Manhattan, which is also where he and his wife were married and where their children were baptized. In May 2016, he and his wife delivered the commencement address at the Catholic University of America. They also delivered the commencement address at his wife's alma mater, Marquette University, in May 2018. They both received honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees as part of the graduation ceremony.
In 2019, Gaffigan apologized on social media after endorsing the "Moriori First" myth in one of his stand-up shows. The myth falsely claims that Māori displaced the Moriori as the first people of New Zealand, and has been used to justify white settler colonialism. Gaffigan also made disparaging remarks about Māori people, which were described as "offensive" and "ignorant" on New Zealand social media.
Discography
Filmography
Awards and nominations
On April 26, 2014, Gaffigan received the award for Concert Comedian at the American Comedy Awards for his work.
In 2007, Pale Force was nominated for a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Broadband Program in the Comedy category. Gaffigan served as executive producer, writer, and lead actor.
In 2016, he won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Morning Program for his contributions as a commentator to CBS Sunday Morning.
Grammy Awards
The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Gaffigan has been nominated eight times.
