Tim Herlihy

Timothy Patrick Herlihy was born on October 9, 1966, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, where his father served as a New York City firefighter. He graduated from Arlington High School in 1984 and went on to study accounting and international business at New York University, where he shared a dormitory room in Brittany Hall with fellow student Adam Sandler. When Sandler began performing stand-up comedy during their sophomore year, Herlihy wrote material for him, establishing a creative partnership that would define much of his career.

After earning his degree in 1988, Herlihy spent a year working as an accountant at Ernst & Young in Manhattan before enrolling at the New York University School of Law. He continued writing with Sandler during this period, contributing to Saturday Night Live sketches while Sandler was a cast member. Following law school, Herlihy took a position as a securities lawyer at Cahill Gordon & Reindel in Lower Manhattan, and it was during late nights at the firm that he drafted the screenplay for Billy Madison, which he co-wrote with Sandler and which was released in 1995.

In March 1994, Herlihy was hired as a staff writer at Saturday Night Live. He remained at the show after Sandler's departure in 1995, becoming one of five writers to return the following season, and eventually rose to the positions of head writer and producer. Among his notable contributions were political sketches written ahead of the 1996 presidential election and a 1999 sketch co-written with Tina Fey in which Monica Lewinsky appeared. He left the program in 1999 to concentrate on film work, though he returned for one episode in 2015 to collaborate with Tracy Morgan on Brian Fellow's Safari Planet, a recurring sketch the two had developed together in the 1990s. That episode received an Emmy Award nomination for outstanding writing and won a Writers Guild Award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy/Variety sketch series.

Herlihy's film writing credits with Sandler include Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Wedding Singer (1998), The Waterboy (1998), Big Daddy (1999), and Pixels (2015), among others. Films he has written or produced have collectively grossed more than three billion dollars at the worldwide box office. In addition to writing, Herlihy has appeared on screen in several productions, playing a bartender in both The Wedding Singer and The Ridiculous 6, and performing as the Singing Kangaroo in Big Daddy, a role that also yielded a vocal contribution to that film's soundtrack. He has written for and performed on three of Sandler's comedy albums: They're All Gonna Laugh at You! (1993), What the Hell Happened to Me? (1996), and Shhh...Don't Tell (2004). Sandler paid tribute to their friendship by naming a Saturday Night Live character "The Herlihy Boy" in his honor.

Herlihy's Broadway work centers on the 2006 musical adaptation of The Wedding Singer. He co-wrote the book and two songs for the production alongside Chad Beguelin, and also served as a producer. The show opened at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on April 27, 2006, and ran for 284 performances before closing on December 31, 2006. The book by Herlihy and Beguelin received a Tony Award nomination for Best Book of a Musical, and the production itself was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical. The show has since been mounted in numerous international productions.

Herlihy's son, Martin, attended New York University and writes for Saturday Night Live as a member of the comedy trio Please Don't Destroy, which also includes John Higgins, son of Saturday Night Live writer Steve Higgins.