Jon Lovitz

Guest Star Information
Gender	‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ Male ♂ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎
Status	Alive
Birth	July 21, 1957 (1957-07-21)
Nationality	American
Claim to fame	Comedian Actor Singer
First appearance	"The Way We Was"

Jonathan Michael Lovitz (born July 21, 1957) is an American comedian, actor, and singer perhaps best known as a cast member of Saturday Night Live and the voice of Jay Sherman in The Critic. He is also a frequent guest star on The Simpsons. His first character, Artie Ziff (Marge's prom date from season two's "The Way We Was") was originally supposed to be a one-off character. But the staff loved Lovitz so they kept bringing him back.

Early life

Lovitz was born in Tarzana California, to a Jewish couple. He attended and studied theater at the University of California at Irvine and graduated in 1979. He studied acting with Tony Barr at the Film Actors Workshop. He became a member of The Groundlings comedy troupe where he befriended Phil Hartman (who, coincidentally, was also an SNL cast member and Simpsons voice actor) and Paul Reubens (who auditioned to be on Saturday Night Live during its infamously awful sixth season [1980-1981], but lost to Gilbert Gottfried. The loss led Reubens to create the comedy special, The Pee Wee Herman Show, which would later be the CBS Saturday morning kids' show Pee Wee's Playhouse). His father was an immigrant from Albania who lived in Jacksonville, Florida, and later moved to California.

Career

Saturday Night Live

Lovitz was a cast member of Saturday Night Live from 1985 (during the show's failed attempt at bringing semi-established celebrities, like Joan Cusack, Anthony Michael Hall, Randy Quaid, and Robert Downey, Jr., to the cast. Lovitz, along with Nora Dunn, then-Weekend Update anchor, Dennis Miller, and feature players Al Franken and A. Whitney Brown, were the only cast members from season 11 to move on to season 12, which is considered by critics and fans to be SNL's return to form after years of shaky quality) to 1990. Lovitz later said in an interview for the book Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live that his time on SNL was the most memorable in his career. He went from having no money to being offered a $500,000 movie contract. He was nominated for an Emmy his first two years on Saturday Night Live. One of his most notable SNL characters was "Tommy Flanagan, The Pathological Liar" that generated the catchphrase, "Yeah! That's the ticket!" Some of his other recurring characters included Master Thespian, Tonto, Mephistopheles, and Hanukkah Harry. His most notable celebrity impressions include Michael Dukakis, Harvey Fierstein, Andrew "Dice" Clay, Don Adams, Gene Shalit, and Sylvester Stallone.

Voice over work

Lovitz has lent his voice to several cartoons and films. In the series The Critic he played the title character of Jay Sherman, a fat, ugly, balding film critic who must deal with being divorced, reviewing lousy movies, and finding love, despite not being attractive. On The Simpsons he played Marge's ex-prom date Artie Ziff, theater director Llewellyn Sinclair (and his sister, who runs a daycare center) on the season four episode "A Streetcar Named Marge", Jay Sherman from The Critic in the Season 6 crossover episode "A Star Is Burns" (and a brief appearance on season eight's "Hurricane Neddy" where Jay Sherman is one of the patients at the Calmwood Mental Hospital), paparazzo Enrico Irritazio in the season eighteen episode "Homerazzi", Professor Lombardo (the community college art teacher who praised Marge's Ringo Starr artwork on "Brush with Greatness"), and Aristotle Amadopolis (the nuclear plant boss who was a rival to Mr. Burns on "Homer Defined" and "Homer at the Bat") In "The Ziff Who Came To Dinner", he not only voices Ziff, but has a brief bit as Sinclair, Amadopolis, Lombardo, and Sherman at the same time.

Movie cameos and television guest appearances

In the late 1990s, Lovitz was "the man who wrote the Yellow Pages", in a series of commercials and print ads for the American Yellow Pages industry.

He also had an unaccredited cameo as a rival crooner to Adam Sandler in the movie The Wedding Singer.

Lovitz has also appeared on Friends twice. He first appeared in the Season 1 episode "The One With The Stoned Guy" as a restaurateur who gets stoned on marijuana trip just prior to interviewing Monica Geller for a job. He reappeared years later in the Season 9 episode "The One with the Blind Dates", where it is revealed that he lost his restaurant due to his drug problem.

He also appeared on Seinfeld as Gary Fogel, a man who lies about having cancer ("The Scofflaw") and later dies in a car accident.

Lovitz guest-starred twice on Newsradio as two separate characters before becoming a cast member in the show's final season (playing a third character).

Broadway theater

He has appeared on Broadway at the Music Box Theater in Neil Simon's play The Dinner Party, taking over the lead role from Henry Winkler. He sang at Carnegie Hall three times (including Great Performances' Ira Gershwin at 100: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall) and sang the national anthem at Dodger Stadium and the U.S. Open.

On October 10, 2001, Lovitz sang a duet (with Robbie Williams) of the song "Well, Did You Evah" at the Royal Albert Hall in the UK. The recording can be found on the Swing When You're Winning album.

Stand-up comedy

In 2005, Lovitz entered stand-up comedy for the first time in his career. He also appeared in the film The Producers as the strict accounting firm chairman, Mr. Marx. In 2006, he became the spokesperson in an advertising campaign for the Subway restaurant chain. He was dropped from the campaign later that year by Fred De Luca after test audiences and a number of phone calls and letters deemed him not funny enough to cause people to eat.

On May 31, 2007 the Laugh Factory on Sunset Strip announced that Lovitz had signed a deal to appear there every Wednesday night for the rest of his life. Or, Lovitz could appear in New York if he is there on a project such as a movie. In addition, Lovitz will write a Laugh Factory blog giving advice to up-and-coming comedians. Lovitz commented "Who knows? I could become the Don Ho of Los Angeles," he said. "God knows I've got enough Hawaiian shirts".

Confrontation with Andy Dick

On July 11, 2007, Lovitz got into a violent confrontation with fellow comedian Andy Dick at the Laugh Factory. Lovitz had long blamed Dick for reintroducing Phil Hartman's wife Brynn to cocaine (after 10 years of sobriety) just five months before she would murder her husband and commit suicide. Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada said, "Jon picked Andy up by the head and smashed him into the bar four or five times, and blood started gushing out of his nose." Dick had previously said to Lovitz he would "put the 'Phil Hartman hex' on you - you’re the next one to die." Lovitz told Page Six, "All the comedians are glad I did it because this guy is an asshole." He has not commented further. Lovitz succeeded Hartman on the comedy series NewsRadio following Hartman's murder; Dick was a co-star.

Recently, Lovitz was on the 97.1 Morning Show. When he was asked about the Andy Dick incident, he replied, "Oh, I just call him A. Dick."

Filmography

Films

Film	Year	Role
Hamburger The Motion Picture	1986	Security Guard
Last Resort	1986	Bartender
Jumpin' Jack Flash	1986	Doug
Ratboy	1986	Party Guest
¡Three Amigos!	1986	Morty
The Brave Little Toaster	1987	The Radio (voice)
Big	1988	Scotty Brennen
My Stepmother is an Alien	1988	Ron Mills
Cranium Command (short subject)	1989	Right Cranium
Mr. Destiny	1990	Clip Metzler
Tales from the Crypt	1991	Barry Blye
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West	1991	T.R. Chula
A League of Their Own	1992	Ernie Capadino
Mom and Dad Save The World	1992	Emperor Todd Spengo
Loaded Weapon 1	1993	Becker
Coneheads	1993	Dr. Rudolph, Dentist (credited)
City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold	1994	Glen Robbins
North	1994	Arthur Belt
Trapped in Paradise	1994	Dave Firpo
The Great White Hype	1996	Sol
Matilda	1996	Million $ Sticky Host
High School High	1996	Richard Clark
The Wedding Singer	1998	Jimmie Moore (credited)
Banjo-Kazooie (commercial)	1998	Narrator (Voice)
Happiness	1998	Andy Kornbluth
Spyro the Dragon (video game)	1998	Tomas, Oswin, Cosmos, Zane, additional voices (voice)
Lost and Found	1999	Uncle Harry
Small Time Crooks	2000	Benny
Little Nicky	2000	Pepper
Sand	2000	Kirby
3000 Miles to Graceland	2001	Jay Peterson
Cats & Dogs	2001	Calico (voice)
Rat Race	2001	Randall 'Randy' Pear
Good Advice	2001	Barry Sherman
Eight Crazy Nights	2002	Tom Baltezor (voice)
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star	2003	Sidney Wernick
The Stepford Wives	2004	Dave Markowitz
Pancho's Pizza (short film)	2005
Bailey's Billion$	2005	Bailey (voice)
The Producers	2005	Mr. Marks
The Benchwarmers	2006	Mel
Southland Tales	2007	Bart Bookman
Farce of the Penguins	2007	My eyes are up here Penguin (voice)
I Could Never Be Your Woman	2007

Television

Show	Years	Role
Saturday Night Live	1985–1990	various
Seinfeld	1989–1998	'Gary Fogel' in The Scofflaw
The Simpsons	1991-Present	Llewellyn Sinclair, Ms. Sinclair, Professor Lombardo, Enrico Irritazio, Artie Ziff, Aristotle Amadopolis, and Jay Sherman
Friends	1995 & 2003	Restaurant owner who interviews Monica Geller and later goes out on a date with Rachel Green
The Critic	1994–1995	Jay Sherman
NewsRadio	1998–1999	Max Louis, Fred, and Mike Johnson

He is currently in the cast of Mr. Box Office as Bobby Gold.

Characters

Jon Lovitz as himself in My Way or the Highway to Heaven

• Llewellyn Sinclair
• Ms. Sinclair
• Professor Lombardo
• Enrico Irritazio
• Artie Ziff
• Aristotle Amadopolis
• Jay Sherman
• Avery Devereaux
• himself

Appearances

• Episode – "The Way We Was"
• Episode – "Brush with Greatness"
• Episode – "Homer Defined"
• Episode – "A Streetcar Named Marge"
• Episode – "Another Simpsons Clip Show"
• Episode – "A Star Is Burns"
• Episode – "Hurricane Neddy"
• Episode – "Half-Decent Proposal"
• Episode – "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner"
• Episode – "Homerazzi"
• THOH – "Treehouse of Horror XXIII"
• Episode – "YOLO"
• Episode – "Fears of a Clown"
• Episode – "Mr. Lisa's Opus"
• Episode – "My Way or the Highway to Heaven"
• Episode – "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say D'oh"
• Episode – "Hail to the Teeth"
• Episode – "Parahormonal Activity"