Dave Holmes

Dave Holmes, born David Robert Holmes on March 14, 1971, is an American actor, television host, writer, podcaster, and producer. Though born in New Jersey, he was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, where his family — parents Charles and Mary Lou and older brothers Dan and Steve — operates a financial consulting business in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton. Holmes attended Villa Duchesne and Oak Hill School, followed by the Saint Louis Priory School, before enrolling at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. During his time there, he worked at the campus radio station WCHC and interned at WCCA-TV, Worcester's public access television station.

Holmes first came to national attention in 1998 as the runner-up on MTV's inaugural Wanna Be a VJ contest, where he set himself apart from other contestants through an extensive knowledge of music trivia. Although Jesse Camp won the competition, MTV hired Holmes as a VJ shortly afterward. He went on to host several programs for the network, including 120 Minutes, Video Clichés, a Real World reunion special, and Say What? Karaoke, and also served as a co-host and substitute host on Total Request Live. His tenure at MTV continued until 2002.

In 2000, Holmes appeared on Broadway in The Rocky Horror Show. Following his MTV years, he expanded his television hosting work considerably, including a decade-long run hosting FX's weekly movie night DVD on TV and six seasons on Court TV's Saturday Night Solution. In 2005, he hosted the CBS reality comedy series Fire Me Please, and on July 7, 2007, he co-hosted Bravo's coverage of the Live Earth concerts alongside Karen Duffy. Holmes also held a recurring role as Leslie Frost on Comedy Central's Reno 911! from 2004 to 2009, a character he reprised in the 2007 film Reno 911!: Miami.

His film appearances include roles in Pillowfighter (2002), Fantastic Four (2005), You Owe Us. (2006), Atomic Zoo: Sylvia Plath Car Wash (2010), Hell Baby (2013), Contracted (2013), and Framing Britney Spears - The New York Times Presents (2021), among others. He also appeared in a series of commercials for Ford Motor Company.

Holmes came out as a gay man in Out magazine in 2002, and on September 23, 2010, he contributed a video to the It Gets Better project, initiated by advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage. His 2016 memoir, Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs, published by Crown Archetype, an imprint of Penguin Random House, chronicles his path to self-acceptance during adolescence and early adulthood, using popular music from the 1980s onward as a framework. Kirkus Reviews described the book as a coming-of-age story.

Since 2003, Holmes has co-hosted the live comedy game show The Friday Forty alongside Walking Dead executive producer Scott M. Gimple. He has served as an editor-at-large for Esquire since 2015 and is an on-air personality on the SiriusXM music channel The Spectrum. He hosts the World of Wonder podcast Homophilia and the Maximum Fun comedy quiz show Troubled Waters, and co-hosts the podcast Truu Stowray with musician Mike Doughty. In October 2021, he created and hosted the ten-episode limited series podcast Waiting for Impact, which traces the history of the band Sudden Impact and examines fame in the early 1990s music industry. He also hosts In Transit on Very Local. Holmes has been in a relationship with musician Ben Wise since the early 2000s.