David Cross

David Cross, born on April 4, 1964, in Roswell, Georgia, is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television producer. He grew up in a Jewish household as the oldest of three children, with two younger sisters. His father, Barry Cross, immigrated from Leeds, England, and his mother is named Susi. The family relocated to Florida six months after Cross's birth, then moved to New York and Connecticut before settling back in Roswell, where Cross spent nearly a decade. Financial hardship marked his childhood; the family was evicted from their home, and Cross spent periods living in motels and at friends' houses. His father departed when Cross was ten years old, and the two had no contact after Cross turned nineteen, despite both living primarily in New York City until Cross sold his home there in 2011.

Cross graduated from Northside High School in Atlanta and moved to New York City the following day. After a brief stint doing lawn care work on Long Island, he enrolled at Emerson College in Boston, where he joined a college sketch group called This Is Pathetic and met performer John Ennis. He left Emerson after one semester. In the summer of 1985, Cross and Ennis drove to Los Angeles together in pursuit of acting work, though the trip did not substantially advance either of their careers. Cross returned to Boston and continued developing his stand-up work through the mid-1980s and into the early 1990s. By 1990, he was performing regularly at Catch a Rising Star alongside Janeane Garofalo and Louis C.K., and he formed a sketch comedy group called Cross Comedy with twelve other performers, staging a new show each week.

Cross launched his professional television career as a writer on The Ben Stiller Show, where he occasionally appeared on screen and wrote the sketch "The Legend of T.J. O'Pootertoot." It was during this period that he first met Bob Odenkirk. In 1993, Cross won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for his contributions to that show. He and Odenkirk went on to co-create the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show with Bob and David, which ran from 1995 to 1998 and earned Cross three Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Cross also appeared in Men in Black in 1997, playing a morgue employee named Newton, and reprised the character — reimagined as a video store owner — in Men in Black II in 2002.

Cross became widely recognized for his role as Tobias Fünke in the Fox and Netflix sitcom Arrested Development, which aired from 2003 to 2006 and again from 2013 to 2019. The role was originally conceived as a minor one. For his work on the series, Cross received a Satellite Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series, and he shared three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series with his castmates. He also portrayed Ian Hawke in the first three Alvin and the Chipmunks films — the original 2007 release, The Squeakquel in 2009, and Chipwrecked in 2011. Cross created, wrote, executive produced, and starred in The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, which ran from 2010 to 2016, and appeared on Modern Family from 2011 to 2012.

His voice work spans numerous projects, including Curious George in 2006, Battle for Terra in 2007, the Kung Fu Panda franchise from 2008 to 2016, Megamind in 2010, and Next Gen in 2018. He also provided voices for the sitcom Oliver Beene from 2003 to 2004, voiced a Marine in the video game Halo 2 in 2004, and contributed to Comedy Central's animated series Shorties Watchin' Shorties in 2004. From October 2005, Cross appeared regularly on The Colbert Report as a fictional liberal radio host named Russ Lieber. He developed the animated series Freak Show for Comedy Central in 2006, which co-starred H. Jon Benjamin and was cancelled due to low ratings.

Cross has released five stand-up comedy albums: Shut Up You Fucking Baby! in 2002, It's Not Funny in 2004, Bigger and Blackerer in 2010, Making America Great Again/...America... Great... in 2016, and Oh, Come On in 2019. His first three records were released on CD through the indie-rock label Sub Pop. He received Grammy Award nominations for Best Comedy Album for Shut Up You Fucking Baby! in 2003 and for ...America... Great... in 2016. In 1999, he performed a one-hour HBO stand-up special titled The Pride Is Back, and in 2003 he released the tour film Let America Laugh. That same year, Comedy Central ranked him number 85 on its list of the 100 greatest stand-ups of all time.

Cross also worked with radio artist Joe Frank on multiple occasions, appearing in Frank's 1994 programs "A Hearing" and "The Last Run," which were later combined into "The OJ Chronicles" in 1997, in which Cross played OJ's valet. He starred in Frank's 1999 radio program "Jam" and collaborated with Frank on KCRW's Unfictional programs "A Conversation" in 2013 and "Downfall" in 2015.

On Broadway, Cross appeared in The 24 Hour Plays in 2004 and All In: Comedy About Love, with his Broadway presence spanning from 2006 to 2024.