Mike Myers

Season 7, Episode 706

Original Airdate: January 14, 2001

Mike Myers was born on May 25, 1963 in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada and began acting in commercials at the age of eight. After graduating high school, Myers joined the Toronto based improv group Second City and spent the next eight years honing his comedic skills and developing the crazy characters that he had been working on since high school.

In 1974, when Myers was 11 years old, he appeared with actress Gilda Radner in a TV ad for British Columbia Hydro Electric. The love struck boy developed an instant crush on his co-star. A year later, Myers saw Radner on the premiere of Saturday Night Live and vowed one day he too would join the cast of the show. That dream was fulfilled in 1989 when he began a five year run on the popular NBC series. The outrageous SNL characters he is best known for include Sprockets host Deiter, Middle Aged Man, and his personal favorite, Coffee Talk host Linda Richman, who was patterned after Myers' real life mother-in-law. However, it is his “Party On!” character of Wayne Campbell that he is most identified with.

In 1992, he and fellow SNL castmate Dana Carvey brought the whacky antics of Wayne and Garth to the big screen in the box office hit Wayne's World. An equally popular sequel Wayne's World II followed in 1993. Soon after, Myers again began developing another one of his outlandish characters, this time a super-cool British spy from the 1960s. The result was the sleeper hit Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), which starred Myers both as the spy and the villainous Dr. Evil. The film's success produced a popular sequel, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999).

Myers' other film credits include Mystery, Alaska (1999), So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993) and a critically acclaimed dramatic performance as night club owner Steve Rubell in 54 (1998). In summer 2001, Myers voiced the title character in the computer-animated blockbuster Shrek, co-starring the vocal talents of Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz.

Future films included another installment of Austin Powers and a Shrek sequel. Myers is an avid hockey fan, has three dogs each named after hockey players and met his wife at a hockey game when she was struck by a puck.