With more than a dozen big-time late-night talk show hosts and hundreds of smaller ones, it can be hard to know which pithy host to tune into weekly. Whether you’re looking for serious coverage or ridiculous tangents, there’s no host quite as bingeable as John Oliver.
His solo HBO show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, has been doing incredible deep dives into sensitive and underrepresented problems for almost a decade, and has won more than 50 awards over its tenure. With all his success in the U.S., it’s no surprise that the U.K.-born comedian transplanted stateside.
When was John Oliver born?
John Oliver was born in Erdington, England, on 23 April 1977. His parents were both educators, though his father also held a position as a social worker. Oliver landed his first decent acting gig at 8 years old on the BBC. He told fellow late-night comedian Seth Meyers it was due to his spectacular talent of having, “dark hair and brown eyes.”
While attending Christ’s College in Cambridge, he joined the Cambridge Footlights, the university’s theatrical club. Unsurprisingly, he went on to head the group in 1997 and graduated the next year with a degree in English. Within 3 years Oliver was making a name for himself in the comedy scene. During the early Aughts, he began working at comedy festivals and co-hosted a political radio show. He worked on the BBC Three comedy series, The State We’re In, the satirical show Gash, and wrote his own satirical program, The Department by 2004. Starting in 2005, Oliver made frequent appearances as a panelist in the satirical news show, Mock the Week.
Though he had never met him, comedian Ricky Gervais was a fan of his work and recommended him to Jon Stewart for a potential correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Where does John Oliver live?
John Oliver joined The Daily Show cast in 2006 and quickly transplanted stateside. The show filmed live in New York Monday through Thursday each week, requiring Oliver to stay nearby. He relocated to America for the position and apparently liked it so much that he never left. He passed his citizenship test in 2020 and lives near West 62nd Street. The 3000-foot apartment allegedly cost him just under $10 million dollars.
Oliver lives with his wife, former combat medic Kate Norley, and their two sons.
