Eugene Levy

Eugene Levy is a Canadian actor, comedian, and writer born on December 17, 1946, in Hamilton, Ontario, to a Jewish family. His mother, Rebecca (née Kudlatz), was born in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, Scotland, to Polish Jewish parents, and later emigrated to Canada. His father, Joseph, was a Sephardi Jew with ancestry from Spain and Bulgaria and worked as a foreman at a car factory. Levy has a brother, Fred, and a sister, Barbara. He attended Westdale Secondary School, where he served as student council president and faced antisemitic bullying during his campaign, with his posters defaced with the word "Jew," which he declined to remove. He went on to McMaster University, earning a Bachelor of Arts in sociology in 1969, and served as vice-president of the McMaster Film Board, a student film group where he first encountered filmmaker Ivan Reitman.

Levy's Broadway credit dates to 1972, when he appeared in Godspell. The production originated as a Toronto staging that opened at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, intended for a limited subscription run of a few dozen performances, with a cast drawn entirely from local performers rather than a touring company. Following an enthusiastic audience response, the show relocated to the Bayview Playhouse in Leaside, where it ran until August 1973, accumulating a then-record 488 performances. The cast included Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, Gilda Radner, Dave Thomas, and Martin Short, with Paul Shaffer serving as musical director and Howard Shore playing saxophone.

Following Godspell, Levy became a member of Second City in Toronto before joining the sketch comedy television series SCTV, which aired from 1976 to 1984. Among his recurring characters on the program was Earl Camembert, a dimwitted news anchor conceived as a parody of Canadian newsman Earl Cameron. He also originated a wide range of other characters on the series, including comedian Bobby Bittman, scandal sheet entrepreneur Dr. Raoul Withers, accordionist Stan Schmenge, and teen dance show host Rockin' Mel Slirrup, among many others. His celebrity impressions on the show encompassed figures such as Perry Como, Sean Connery, Alex Trebek, Howard Cosell, and Milton Berle.

From the 1980s onward, Levy appeared in a broad range of film comedies, including National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), Splash (1984), Father of the Bride (1991), Father of the Bride Part II (1995), and the American Pie series, which ran from 1999 to 2012. He also provided voice work in Over the Hedge (2006), Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009), and Finding Dory (2016). He created the television sitcom Maniac Mansion, based on the LucasArts video game of the same name.

A sustained creative partnership with actor-director Christopher Guest produced four mockumentary films: Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003), and For Your Consideration (2006). Levy co-wrote each of these films in addition to appearing in them. His performance as emotionally unstable folksinger Mitch Cohen in A Mighty Wind earned him a Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical or Comedy and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. He and his collaborators Christopher Guest and Michael McKean also received the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media in 2004 for the film's title song.

In 2015, Levy co-created the CBC and Pop TV sitcom Schitt's Creek alongside his son Dan Levy. The series ran until 2020, with Levy starring as Johnny Rose, the patriarch of the Rose family. His daughter, Sarah Levy, appeared in the series as Twyla Sands, a waitress at the local diner, and his brother Fred served as a producer on the show. Levy received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in both 2019 and 2020, winning the award in 2020. In 2023, he hosted and executive produced The Reluctant Traveler, a travel series for Apple TV+, which has continued into a third season.

Among his honors, Levy received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, Canada's highest performing arts distinction, in 2008, and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2011. He was announced as a recipient of a star on Canada's Walk of Fame in 2006, and in 2024 was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Levy married Deborah Divine in 1977, and the couple raised their two children, Dan and Sarah, in Toronto. He is an advocate for autism awareness and a member of the Canadian charity Artists Against Racism. In 2025, his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles was destroyed in the Palisades wildfire.