"Andy Samberg"

David Andrew "Andy" Samberg (born August 18, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, writer, rapper and member of the comedy group The Lonely Island. He is known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2005–2012, where he and The Lonely Island have been credited with popularizing the Emmy-winning SNL Digital Shorts, the comical short films and music videos starring Samberg and other members of the SNL cast. As a film actor, Samberg has starred in Hot Rod, That's My Boy, and Celeste and Jesse Forever, and appeared in Space Chimps; Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist; I Love You, Man; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Friends with Benefits; and What's Your Number?.

Samberg was born in Berkeley, California. His mother, Marjorie "Margi" (née Marrow), is an elementary school teacher who taught at Old Mill School, and his father, Joe Samberg, is a photographer. Samberg has two sisters, Johanna and Darrow. His family is Jewish, and his maternal grandfather, industrial psychologist and philanthropist Alfred J. Marrow, served as the executive chair of the American Jewish Congress. Samberg has described himself as "not particularly religious." Samberg is a third cousin of U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin (their maternal grandfathers were first cousins).

Samberg discovered Saturday Night Live as a child, while sneaking past his parents to watch professional wrestling on television. He became "obsessed" with the show, and his devotion to comedy became frustrating to teachers who felt he was unfocused on his schoolwork.

Samberg graduated from Berkeley High School in 1996. While there, he became interested in creative writing, and has stated: "[Writing classes] were the ones that I put all my effort into...that's what I cared about and that's what I ended up doing." He attended college at University of California, Santa Cruz, for two years before transferring to New York University for its acclaimed film school. He majored in experimental film, where he starred as "Monkey" in the music video for James Kochalka's song "Monkey vs. Robot".

Before joining the late night comedy show SNL, Andy Samberg was a YouTube and Internet star. In the early 2000s, while in junior high school, he first began making comedy videos with his two friends Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. These comedic videos weren't very popular at the time due to the lack of websites such as YouTube and other free video sharing sites. However, when YouTube was invented in 2005, the streaming of their videos became much more widespread over the Internet. "With respect to some of these YouTube stars, Hollywood talent agencies have recognized the revenue potential of these entertainers and are signing them into development deals." He became a featured player on the show in part because of the work he'd done on his own sketch comedy website TheLonelyIsland.com. That helped them land an agent and eventually get hired at SNL.

In September 2005, The Lonely Island confirmed that Samberg would be joining Saturday Night Live as a featured player and his fellow group members would join the show's writing staff. While his live sketch roles were limited in his first year, he appeared in many prerecorded sketches, including commercial parodies and various other filmed segments.

For the December 17, 2005 show, he and Chris Parnell starred in the Digital Short "Lazy Sunday", a nerdcore hip hop song performed by two Manhattanites on a quest to see the film The Chronicles of Narnia. The short quickly became an Internet phenomenon and garnered Samberg significant media and public attention, as did "Dick in a Box," a duet with Justin Timberlake that won a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics. Samberg has found success with the song "Jizz in My Pants," which garnered over 32 million views and about 52,000 comments on YouTube. His comedy troupe's collaboration with T-Pain, the "I'm on a Boat" music video, had over 56 million views on YouTube after debuting on February 7, 2009, and was nominated for a Grammy Award. Another digital short, "Motherlover" (also featuring Timberlake), was released on May 10, 2009 (to commemorate Mother's Day), and is a sequel of "Dick in a Box." On December 12, 2010, Samberg and the other members of the Lonely Island debuted their next digital short, titled "I Just Had Sex." The video features R&B singer Akon, with cameos by former tennis professional John McEnroe, and actresses Blake Lively and Jessica Alba. On January 29, 2011, The Lonely Island released another single from its upcoming second album titled The Creep featuring Nicki Minaj and John Waters. This was followed on May 7, 2011, with the song "Jack Sparrow" which featured Michael Bolton.

Outside of his prerecorded segments, he also participates in recurring live segments, such as his Blizzard Man sketch.

On June 1, 2012, Samberg's spokesperson announced that he would be leaving Saturday Night Live after seven years on the show.

Prior to joining the cast of SNL, Samberg was (and remains) a member of the comedy troupe The Lonely Island (along with Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer). The trio began writing for Saturday Night Live in 2005 and released their debut album, Incredibad, in 2009. Samberg has appeared in numerous theatrical films, commercials, music videos and has hosted special events, including the 2009 MTV Movie Awards.

In 2012, Samberg delivered the Class Day speech at Harvard University. Also that year, he starred with Adam Sandler in the comedy film That's My Boy, and also starred with Rashida Jones in Celeste and Jesse Forever.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org