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Conan Christopher O'Brien (born April 18, 1963) is
an Irish American comedian.  He has been host of
the television program Late Night with Conan
O'Brien on the NBC network since 1993.  He is
slated to succeed Jay Leno as the host of The
Tonight Show in 2009.

==Biography==
O'Brien was born in Brookline,
Massachusetts|Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb
of Boston, Massachusetts|Boston.  He is the third
of six children and one of four boys.  A Roman
Catholicism|Roman Catholic, he was a Reader (minor
orders)|lector at St. Ignatius Parish.  His
father, Dr. Thomas O'Brien, was a research
physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an
associate professor at Harvard Medical School. His
mother, Ruth Reardon O'Brien, is a former
well-known lawyer at the Boston law firm of Ropes
& Gray. His sister Jane O'Brien|Jane is a comedy
writer and producer. O'Brien is a distant cousin
of Denis Leary through marriage; contrary to
popular belief, they are not actually related
through a recent common ancestor.

On January 12, 2002, O'Brien married advertising
executive Liza Powel|Liza Powel in Seattle,
Washington|Seattle, Washington, in a nuptial Mass
at St. James Cathedral by Father Paul O'Brien (no
relation). They have one daughter, Neve, born on
October 14, 2003 in New York City. They are
expecting their second child this November.

==Education==
After graduating as the valedictorian from
Brookline High School (Brookline, Massachusetts),
O'Brien entered Harvard University.  During each
of the four years he attended the school, he was a
writer for the prestigious Harvard Lampoon humor
magazine.  During his junior and senior years,
O'Brien served as the Lampoon's president, making
him only the second person ever to serve as
president twice, and the first person to have done
it in 85 years.  He graduated Latin honors|magna
cum laude from Harvard in 1985 with a
concentration in American History and Literature.

==Television career==
O'Brien moved to Los Angeles, California|Los
Angeles upon graduation to join the writing staff
of Home Box Office|HBO's Not Necessarily the News.
He spent two years with that show, and performed
regularly with improvisational groups like The
Groundlings.  He also acted in corporate
infomercials to earn money during this period.

After Not Necessarily the News, O'Brien worked as
the warm-up comic for the Wilton North Report, a
Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox show that was on the
air for just four weeks.  O'Brien then moved on to
the Happy Happy Good Show, a stage show being put
on in Chicago, Illinois at the time.

In January 1988 Saturday Night Live's executive
producer Lorne Michaels hired O'Brien as a writer.
During his 3½ years on SNL he wrote such
recurring sketches as Mr. Short-Term Memory and
The Girl Watchers, the latter of which was first
performed by Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz. 
Additionally, O'Brien wrote the sketch Nude Beach,
which became infamous due to the fact that the
word penis appeared in it no less than 42 times,
much of it in the form of
song.http://snltranscripts.jt.org/88/88bnudebeach.
phtml  He also appeared as an extra in some skits,
occasionally with a speaking role.  In 1989, he
and the other SNL writers were awarded an Emmy
Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy or
Variety Series.

In the spring of 1991, O'Brien left SNL to write
and produce a pilot for the TV show Lookwell,
starring Adam West. It was broadcast on NBC in
July but was not picked up as a series. That fall
O'Brien signed on as a writer and producer for the
Fox series The Simpsons, where he also became a
supervising producer. In a speech he gave at
Harvard on Class Day in 2000, O'Brien credited The
Simpsons with "saving" him, a reference to the
career slump he was experiencing prior to his
hiring for that
show.http://www.february-7.com/features/conan.htm 
Of the episodes he wrote while there, he considers
Marge vs. the Monorail to be his favorite.

On April 26, 1993, Lorne Michaels chose Conan to
be David Letterman's replacement as host of Late
Night with David Letterman (with Andy Richter as
his sidekick), and the show's name was changed to
Late Night with Conan O'Brien.  It received
generally unfavorable critical reviews for the
first 2-3 years after its debut. Indeed, the show
was reportedly cancelled by network executives,
but was allowed to remain on a day-to-day basis
when it was realized there was no programming
available to replace it.

Since then, however, O'Brien and the Late Night
writing team have consistently been nominated for
an Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or
Variety Series, though they have not won as of
2004. In 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004 he and
the Late Night writing staff won the Writers Guild
of America|Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in
a Comedy/Variety Series. 

In the 2003-04 television season, Late Night with
Conan O'Brien averaged 2.5 million viewers each
week, easily beating out every other show in its
time slot.

In addition, O'Brien currently heads Conaco, a
production partnership with NBC to develop
programming for the network. Its first venture,
the reality show Lost (2001 television
series)|Lost, debuted in fall of 2001.

On September 27, 2004, NBC announced the planned
2009 retirement of Tonight Show host Jay Leno. 
O'Brien was named Leno's successor, following in
the footsteps of Steve Allen, Jack Paar, and
Johnny
Carson.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/27/e
ntertainment/main645832.shtml

==External links==
*http://www.nbc.com/conan/ Late Night with Conan
O'Brien - official website
*http://www.conan-obrien.net/ ConanOBrien.net -
unofficial fansite and forum
*http://www.conologue.com/ Conologue - Conan
O'Brien Coverage
*http://www.conanvsbear.com/ Conan O'Brien vs.
Bear - another unofficial fan site.
*http://www.geocities.com/latenitegoddess/
Pictures of Conan, Liza, and Neve O'Brien