Mike Birbiglia

Mike Birbiglia is an American comedian, actor, director, producer, and Emmy-nominated writer born on June 20, 1978, in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. The youngest of four children, he is the son of Mary Jean Birbiglia, a nurse, and Vincent Paul Birbiglia, a neurologist. Of partial Italian descent, he was raised Roman Catholic and attended St. John's High School for one year before graduating from St. Mark's School in 1996. Watching comedian Steven Wright perform prompted Birbiglia to begin writing jokes at age 16. He went on to earn a degree in English from Georgetown University in 2000, where he performed with the Georgetown Players Improv Troupe alongside John Mulaney and Nick Kroll, worked as a server at a comedy club, and began performing at DC Improv in Washington, D.C.

Birbiglia moved to New York in 2000 and made his first appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2002. He told his first story on stage at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen in 2003 and became a semi-regular contributor to The Moth storytelling series. His debut album, Dog Years, was released in 2004, followed by My Secret Public Album, Volume 1a in 2005, a compilation of his appearances on The Bob and Tom Show. Two additional albums, Two Drink Mike (2006) and My Secret Public Journal Live (2007), were released on Comedy Central Records, with the latter named one of the best comedy albums of the decade by The A.V. Club. In 2008, CBS picked up a sitcom pilot loosely based on his life, featuring Bob Odenkirk and Frances Conroy, though the project never aired.

Birbiglia opened his first solo show, Sleepwalk with Me, off-Broadway at the Bleecker Street Theater in 2008, presented by Nathan Lane. Time Out New York named it their Show of the Year in 2009. He adapted the material into the 2010 book Sleepwalk with Me, and Other Painfully True Stories, which debuted at number 29 on the hardcover nonfiction New York Times Bestseller List and was a finalist for the 2011 Thurber Prize for American Humor. The companion album Sleepwalk With Me Live debuted at number one on the Billboard Comedy Charts. Birbiglia then wrote, directed, and starred in the film adaptation, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, won the NEXT Audience Award, and was produced by Jacob Jaffke and Ira Glass of This American Life.

His second solo show, My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, mounted in 2011, ran four months off-Broadway and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show. Birbiglia toured the production through the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, performing it for the final time at Carnegie Hall on June 2, 2013. The special was ranked the number one stand-up special of 2013 by Vulture, Paste, The Laugh Button, and Laughspin, and Flavorwire listed it among the top 20 funniest stand-up specials of all time. His Thank God for Jokes special, which drew in part from his experience hosting the 2012 Gotham Awards, was released on Netflix on February 28, 2017.

For his second film, Don't Think Twice (2016), Birbiglia drew on his early improv background to write, direct, and star in a story centered on a fictional Manhattan improv troupe. The ensemble cast included Keegan-Michael Key, Gillian Jacobs, Kate Micucci, Tami Sagher, and Chris Gethard. The film received nominations including the Critics' Choice Award for Best Comedy and the St. Louis Film Critics Association award for Best Comedy. His earlier film work as an actor includes appearances in The Fault in Our Stars (2014), Trainwreck (2015), Popstar, and A Man Called Otto. On television, he played Danny Pearson in the third and fourth seasons of Orange Is the New Black, sharing the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series, and portrayed Oscar Langstraat in the third and fifth seasons of Billions.

Birbiglia announced a tour of The New One in April 2017, beginning with 25 cities. The show made its off-Broadway debut at the Cherry Lane Theatre on July 26, 2018, with an extended run through August 26 due to high ticket demand. It transferred to Broadway at the Cort Theatre, with performances running from October 25, 2018, through January 20, 2019. The production earned Birbiglia the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Solo Performance in 2019.

His next Broadway show, Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man & The Pool, premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago from April 28 to May 22, 2022, before opening at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on November 13, 2022, and running through January 15, 2023. The production subsequently played the Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End from September 12 to October 7, 2023, and premiered on Netflix on November 21, 2023. Birbiglia also appeared on Broadway in All Out: Comedy About Ambition. His sixth solo show, The Good Life, premiered as a Netflix special on May 26, 2025.

Beyond his stage and screen work, Birbiglia is a regular contributor to This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International, and hosts the podcast Mike Birbiglia's Working it Out. In March 2020, he co-created the charity initiative Tip Your Waitstaff with fellow comedians to raise funds for comedy clubs closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. He briefly filled in as host of Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2022 while Kimmel recovered from COVID-19. Birbiglia has rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, a condition that causes him to act out his dreams while asleep and that has served as the basis for significant portions of his creative work.