Age, Biography, and Wiki
Conan O'Brien was born on April 18, 1963, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is best known for hosting several late-night talk shows, including "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," and "Conan." O'Brien's career began as a writer for "Saturday Night Live" and "The Simpsons," catapulting him into the spotlight. He currently hosts the popular podcast "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" and has been involved in various other projects, including travel series and live comedy shows.
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 18 April 1963 |
| Age | 62 Years |
| Birth Place | Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Aries |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Notably, Conan O'Brien stands at a height of about 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm), which often becomes a humorous element in his comedy routines. His weight is typically reported to be around 170-180 pounds (77-82 kg), but this can vary.
| Height | 6 feet 4 inches |
| Weight | 82 kg |
| Body Measurements | |
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| Hair Color |
Dating & Relationship Status
Conan O'Brien has been married to Liza Powel O'Brien since 2002. The couple has two children together.
His father, Thomas Francis O'Brien (1929–2024), was a physician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, specializing in epidemiology. His mother, Ruth O'Brien (née Reardon; 1931–2024), was an attorney and partner at the Boston firm Ropes & Gray. O'Brien has three brothers and two sisters. O'Brien attended Brookline High School, where he served as the managing editor of the school newspaper, then called The Sagamore. He was a congressional intern for Congressmen Robert Drinan and Barney Frank, and in his senior year won the National Council of Teachers of English writing contest with his short story "To Bury the Living".
On February 20, 2009, NBC aired the last episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The show consisted of a compilation of previous Late Night clips and included a surprise appearance by former sidekick Andy Richter. Will Ferrell, John Mayer, and the White Stripes also appeared. O'Brien ended the episode by destroying the set with an axe, handing out the pieces of the set to the audience, and thanking a list of people who helped him. Among those thanked were Lorne Michaels, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and O'Brien's wife and children.
The final Tonight Show with O'Brien aired January 22, 2010, and featured guests Tom Hanks, Steve Carell (who did an exit interview and shredded Conan's ID badge), Neil Young (singing "Long May You Run"), and Will Ferrell. For Ferrell's appearance, O'Brien played guitar with the band and Ferrell sang "Free Bird" while reprising his SNL cowbell. Ferrell's wife, Viveca Paulin, together with Ben Harper, Beck, and ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons, also joined the band for this final performance.
On the TV show 30 Rock, O'Brien is depicted as an ex-boyfriend of lead character Liz Lemon, who works in the same building. In the episode "Tracy Does Conan", O'Brien appears as himself, awkwardly reunited with Lemon and coerced by network executive Jack Donaghy into having the character Tracy Jordan on Late Night, despite having been assaulted in Jordan's previous appearance. O'Brien also made a cameo appearance on the U.S. version of The Office. In the episode "Valentine's Day", Michael believes that he spots former SNL cast member Tina Fey, but has actually mistaken another woman for her. In the meantime, O'Brien has a quick walk-on, and the camera crew informs Michael when he returns from talking to the Tina Fey lookalike. In 2011, he starred as himself in the web series Web Therapy (opposite Lisa Kudrow) for three episodes. O'Brien also made a guest appearance as the "Wandering MC" in the 2019 video game Death Stranding, where he communicates with the player using voice lines and facial expressions recorded during his visit to Kojima Productions' headquarters.
He has been a registered Democrat since casting his first vote for president in 1984 for Walter Mondale. He considers himself a moderate on the political spectrum. O'Brien founded the anti-hunger organization Labels Are For Jars with his friend and former Harvard dormmate Father Paul B. O'Brien. He also helped open the Cor Unum meal center in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 2006.
Starting in September 2006, O'Brien was stalked by Father David Ajemian of the Archdiocese of Boston, who, despite multiple warnings to stop, sent O'Brien letters signed as "your priest stalker". Ajemian later sent O'Brien death threats and tried to forcefully enter a taping of Late Night before being arrested. On April 8, 2008, Ajemian pleaded guilty to stalking, and was later laicized.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Liza Powel (m. 2002) |
| Sibling | |
| Children |
Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Conan O'Brien's net worth is estimated to be around $200 million, reflecting his extensive career in television, podcasting, and production. His salary from hosting "Conan" on TBS was reportedly $12 million per year until the show concluded in 2021. Additionally, he earned significant income from the sale of his podcast network, Team Coco, to SiriusXM for $150 million in 2022.
Career, Business, and Investments
Television Career:
- Saturday Night Live: O'Brien began his career as a writer for "Saturday Night Live" from 1988 to 1991.
- The Simpsons: He also wrote for the animated series "The Simpsons."
- Late Night with Conan O'Brien: Hosted from 1993 to 2009.
- The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien: Hosted briefly in 2009.
- Conan: Hosted from 2010 to 2021 on TBS.
Conan Christopher O'Brien (born April 18, 1963) is an American television host, comedian, writer, actor, and producer. He is best known for having hosted late-night talk shows, beginning with Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993–2009) and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009–2010) on the NBC television network, and Conan (2010–2021) on the cable channel TBS. Before his hosting career, O'Brien was a writer for the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1988 to 1991, and the Fox animated sitcom The Simpsons from 1991 to 1993. He has hosted the podcast series Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend since 2018, and starred in the 2024 travel show Conan O'Brien Must Go on Max.
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, O'Brien was raised in an Irish Catholic family. He served as president of The Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, where he graduated with an AB degree in history and literature. He was a writer for the sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News. After writing for several comedy shows in Los Angeles, he joined the writing staff of Saturday Night Live. O'Brien was a writer and producer for The Simpsons for two seasons until he was selected by Lorne Michaels and NBC to take over David Letterman's position as host of Late Night in 1993. Despite unfavorable reviews and threats of cancellation in the show's first years, O'Brien and the show developed and became highly regarded, earning a Primetime Emmy Award. He hosted Late Night for 16 years, and as of 2023 is still the longest-serving host in the history of the franchise.
In 2009, O'Brien moved from New York to Los Angeles to host his own incarnation of The Tonight Show for seven months until highly publicized network politics prompted a host change in 2010. After this departure, O'Brien hosted a 32-city live comedy tour titled The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour, which was the subject of the documentary Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (2011). He then hosted Conan from 2010 to 2021. Throughout his career, he has also hosted a number of awards shows and television specials, including the Emmy Awards in 2002 and 2006, the White House Correspondents' dinner in 1995 and 2013, and the Academy Awards in 2025. Conan was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2010, and is the 2025 recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
After graduating from Harvard, O'Brien moved to Los Angeles to join the writing staff of HBO's sketch comedy series Not Necessarily the News, where he worked for two seasons. Around this time, he started taking improvisation classes with Cynthia Szigeti and The Groundlings. His next job as a writer was on the short-lived The Wilton North Report. In January 1988, Saturday Night Live (SNL) executive producer Lorne Michaels hired O'Brien as a writer. During his three years on SNL, he wrote such recurring sketches as "Mr. Short-Term memory" and "The Girl Watchers"; the latter was first performed by Tom Hanks and Jon Lovitz.
Mike Reiss and Al Jean, then showrunners of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, called O'Brien and offered him a job. The series was prestigious in the writing community at the time; O'Brien recalls "everyone wanted to be on that show, but they never hired." O'Brien was one of the first hires after the show's original crew. With the help of an old Groundlings friend, actor Lisa Kudrow, O'Brien purchased an apartment in Beverly Hills. He and Kudrow became romantically involved as well, and Kudrow believed he should begin performing rather than writing. O'Brien disagreed, feeling that Kudrow was flattering him, and asserting he was happy as a writer. In his speech given at Class Day at Harvard in 2000, O'Brien credited The Simpsons with saving him, a reference to the career slump he was experiencing before being hired for the show.
O'Brien's audience, largely young and male (a coveted demographic), grew steadily and the show began to best competitors in the ratings, and continued to do so for 15 seasons. In the early days of the Internet, fans launched unofficial websites, compiling precise summaries of each episode. Even Tom Shales was a convert: he called the show "one of the most amazing transformations in television history." Beginning in 1996, O'Brien and the Late Night writing team were nominated annually for the Emmy Award for Best Writing in a Comedy or Variety Series, winning the award for the first and only time in 2007. In 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004, he and the Late Night writing staff won the Writers Guild Award for Best Writing in a Comedy/Variety Series. In 2001, he formed his own television production company, Conaco, which subsequently shared in the production credits for Late Night. That same year, he returned to Saturday Night Live, hosting the show during its 26th season.
On February 8, 2010, it was reported that O'Brien was attempting to sell his Central Park West penthouse in New York with an asking price of $35 million. He had purchased the apartment in 2007 for $10 million. Two years earlier, O'Brien had purchased a home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles for over $10.5 million. Some industry insiders have speculated that O'Brien had chosen to stay on the west coast in order to facilitate a return to late night television and because he did not want to put his children through another move.
In May 2022, O'Brien's podcast, as well as the entire Team Coco digital media business, was sold to SiriusXM for $150 million. This sale included all other Team Coco podcasts including Inside Conan and Parks and Recollection, as well as the development of a comedy channel for SiriusXM radio service.
O'Brien was executive producer and co-wrote the pilot of the 2007 NBC adventure/comedy series Andy Barker, P.I., starring O'Brien's sidekick Andy Richter. After six episodes and low ratings, the show was canceled despite being named one of the Top Ten Shows of 2007 by Entertainment Weekly. Later, USA Network ordered a pilot episode of the medical-themed Operating Instructions, which was produced by O'Brien's production company Conaco. In January 2010, NBC ordered two pilots from Conaco, the one-hour courtroom drama Outlaw and a half-hour comedy. Outlaw was produced in eight episodes and premiered on September 15, 2010.
Social Network
Conan O'Brien maintains an active presence on social media platforms, engaging with his fans through Twitter and other platforms. His official Twitter handle is @ConanOBrien.
O'Brien, like many SNL writers, occasionally appeared as an extra in sketches; his most notable appearance was as a doorman in a sketch in which Tom Hanks was inducted into the SNL "Five-Timers Club" for hosting his fifth episode in 1990. O'Brien and Robert Smigel wrote the television pilot for Lookwell starring Adam West, which aired on NBC in 1991. Even with support from NBC president Brandon Tartikoff, the pilot never went to series. Despite the negative reviews, it became a cult hit. It was later screened at The Other Network, a festival of unaired TV pilots produced by Un-Cabaret; it featured an extended interview with O'Brien and was rerun in 2002 on the Trio network.
Meanwhile, David Letterman was preparing to leave the talk show Late Night, prompting executive producer Lorne Michaels to search for a new host. Michaels approached O'Brien to produce; then-agent Gavin Polone stressed that O'Brien wanted to perform, rather than produce. He arranged with Michaels that O'Brien would do a test audition on the stage of The Tonight Show. Jason Alexander and Mimi Rogers were the guests, and the audience was composed of Simpsons writers. Wolodarksky recalled the experience: "Seeing this friend of yours, this guy that you worked with, walk out from behind that curtain and deliver a monologue was like something you could only dream up that you couldn't ever imagine actually happening." The performance was beamed by satellite to New York, where Lorne Michaels and NBC executives watched. The audition was not well received by media commentators, citing his "awkward" humor.
Late Night with Conan O'Brien, originating from Studio 6A at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, premiered on September 13, 1993, to unfavorable reviews from contemporary critics. This reception was not completely unsurprising: there was significant public apprehension due to O'Brien being virtually unknown to the public, and O'Brien himself wrote a self-deprecating The New York Times piece titled "O'Brien Flops!" on the day of the show's premiere. Critics attacked O'Brien: Tom Shales of The Washington Post suggested that "the host resume his previous identity, Conan O'Blivion." Generally, critics viewed O'Brien as nervous and fidgety on-camera, and that he was "too smart, too East Coast, too sophisticated, too young and even too tall to be successful." The show was constantly at risk for cancellation; at one low point in 1994, NBC threatened to put him on a week-to-week contract. Executives were anxious to replace him with Greg Kinnear, who followed O'Brien with Later at 1:30 am. Interns filled empty seats in the audience while affiliates began to inquire about replacement hosts. In one installment after a short stretch of reruns, sidekick Andy Richter described his vacation activities as follows: "I sat back and reminded myself what it's like to be unemployed." The in-joke alluded to the rumors floating in the trades that NBC was near canceling the program.
As of October 2005, Late Night with Conan O'Brien had for eleven years consistently attracted an audience averaging about 2.5 million viewers. In 2006, O'Brien exploited his perceived resemblance to Tarja Halonen, entering her second term as president of Finland. Capitalizing on the resemblance and on the 2006 Finnish presidential election, O'Brien and Late Night aired mock political ads both in support of Halonen and against her main opponent Sauli Niinistö, which influenced popular perception of the race, which Halonen eventually won. O'Brien traveled to Finland shortly after the election. "We took the show to Helsinki for five days," O'Brien recalled, "where we were embraced like a national treasure." As part of the five-day trip, which was released as a one-hour special episode of Late Night, O'Brien met with Halonen at the Finnish Presidential Palace.
O'Brien acquired the nickname "Coco" after its use in the first "Twitter Tracker" sketch during the second episode of his Tonight Show run. Guest Tom Hanks used the nickname during his subsequent interview, even getting the audience to chant it. In reaction to the moniker, O'Brien remarked to Hanks in jest, "If that catches on, I'll sue you." During the taping of the Friday, September 25, 2009, episode of The Tonight Show, O'Brien suffered a mild concussion after he slipped and hit his head while running a race as part of a comedy sketch with guest Teri Hatcher. He was examined at a hospital and released the same day. A rerun was aired that night, but O'Brien returned to work the following Monday and poked fun at the incident.
O'Brien was included in the 2010 Time 100, a list compiled by Time of the 100 most influential people in the world as voted on by readers. After being prohibited from making television appearances of any kind until May, O'Brien spoke about the Tonight Show conflict on the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes on May 2, 2010. During the interview with Steve Kroft, O'Brien said the situation felt "like a marriage breaking up suddenly, violently, quickly. And I was just trying to figure out what happened." He also said he "absolutely" expected NBC to give him more of a chance and that, if in Jay Leno's position, he would not have come back to The Tonight Show. However, O'Brien said he did not feel unfortunate. "It's crucial to me that anyone seeing this, if they take anything away from this, it's I'm fine. I'm doing great," said O'Brien. "I hope people still find me comedically absurd and ridiculous. And I don't regret anything."
On March 11, 2010, O'Brien announced via his Twitter account that he would embark on a 30-city live tour beginning April 12, 2010, entitled, "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour". Co-host Andy Richter, along with members of the former Tonight Show Band, joined O'Brien on the tour. Max Weinberg, however, was not able to join, except for a guest appearance at one of Conan's New York City shows. On April 12, 2010, O'Brien opened his two-month comedy tour in Eugene, Oregon, with a crowd of 2,500 and no TV cameras. The tour traveled through America's Northwest and Canada before moving on to larger cities, including Los Angeles and New York City, where he performed at Radio City Music Hall, next to his former Late Night studios. The tour ended in Atlanta on June 14. In 2011, the documentary film titled Conan O'Brien Can't Stop was released which followed O'Brien throughout his comedy tour. The film premiered March 2011 at the South by Southwest media festival to positive reviews. It was directed by Rodman Flender who is O'Brien's personal friend and classmate at Harvard University.
In February 2015, following the onset of the Cuban thaw, O'Brien became the first American television personality to film in Cuba for more than half a century. O'Brien then visited Armenia for his next show abroad, during which he featured his assistant Sona Movsesian, who is Armenian American. While visiting, O'Brien guest-starred as a gangster on an Armenian soap opera. In April 2016, O'Brien visited South Korea in response to a fan letter urging him to visit, as well as a growing fan base online. His visit included a trip to the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which resulted in O'Brien and Steven Yeun also visiting North Korea on a technicality by stepping across the border line at the DMZ. O'Brien commented on the significance during the sketch, claiming, "The idea that you and I could be in North Korea, talking and communicating freely, seems like kind of a cool message." These remotes were later branded Conan Without Borders and became part of their own series, with O'Brien eventually traveling to thirteen countries in total. The series became some of his most popular work, winning an Emmy in 2018. The international shows became available on Netflix before moving to HBO Max.
In 2018, O'Brien's production company, Team Coco, partnered with Earwolf to launch his own weekly podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. The podcast debuted November 18, 2018, with Will Ferrell as the first guest. O'Brien stated the title is tongue-in-cheek, saying he would like to see if celebrity guests would actually be his friends. In each episode, O'Brien is joined by his guest, as well as his assistant Sona Movsesian and the show's producer Matt Gourley. Guests on the podcast have included Barack and Michelle Obama, Stephen Colbert, and Bob Newhart among others. The podcast has received strong reviews and became the top podcast on iTunes. The podcast has also won numerous awards throughout its run. Deadline Hollywood reported that, as of August 2021, the podcast had been downloaded over 250 million times and was averaging more than 9 million downloads per month.
O'Brien's first guest appearance after beginning his late-night career was playing himself in the season five Simpsons episode "Bart Gets Famous", interviewing Bart Simpson during his rise to fame as a catchphrase comedian. In 1999, O'Brien made an appearance on Futurama in the second-season episode "Xmas Story". O'Brien played himself as a head in a jar and still alive in the year 3000. O'Brien has made multiple voice appearances on the Adult Swim series Robot Chicken, including the specials Robot Chicken: Star Wars and Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II.
In January 2008, after his show was put on hold for two months owing to the strike by the Writers Guild of America, he reemerged on late-night TV sporting a beard, which guest Tom Brokaw described as making him look like "a draft dodger from the Civil War." After leaving The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in 2010, O'Brien again grew a beard, which he kept until May 2011, when it was partially shaved on the set of Conan by Will Ferrell (and completely shaved off-screen by a professional barber).
Education
O'Brien graduated as valedictorian from Brookline High School in 1981 and later earned a degree in History and Literature from Harvard University in 1985. This educational background has influenced his approach to comedy and writing throughout his career.
After graduating as valedictorian in 1981, O'Brien entered Harvard University. He lived in Holworthy Hall during his first year with future businessman Luis Ubiñas and two other roommates, and in Mather House during his three upper-class years. He majored in history and literature, and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985. O'Brien's senior thesis, entitled Literary Progeria in the Works of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, concerned the use of children as symbols in the works of Faulkner and O'Connor. During college, O'Brien briefly played drums in a band called the Bad Clams and was a writer for the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine. During his sophomore and junior years, he served as the Lampoon's president. At this time, O'Brien's future boss at NBC, Jeff Zucker, was serving as president of the school newspaper The Harvard Crimson.
O'Brien wrote some of the series' most acclaimed episodes: "Marge vs. the Monorail" and "Homer Goes to College". The show was initially a highly realistic family sitcom; after O'Brien's debut, the show took a rapid shift in the direction of the surreal. O'Brien also has sole writing credits on "New Kid on the Block" and "Treehouse of Horror IV", on which he wrote the episode wraparounds. Wallace Wolodarsky described a "room character" O'Brien put on for the writers: "Conan used to do this thing called the Nervous Writer that involved him opening a can of Diet Coke and then nervously pitching a joke. He would spray Diet Coke all over himself, and that was always a source of endless amusement among us." During his time at The Simpsons, O'Brien also had a side project working with Smigel on the script for a musical film based on the "Hans and Franz" sketch from Saturday Night Live, but the film was never produced.
O'Brien was picked as the new host of Late Night on April 26, 1993. As the writers headed to the voice record for "Homer Goes to College", O'Brien received a phone call from Polone informing him of the decision. "He was passed out facedown into this horrible shag carpet. He was just quiet and comatose down there on that carpet," recalled postproduction supervisor Michael Mendel. "I remember looking at him and saying, 'Wow. Your life is about to change, in a really dramatic way.'" Fox, however, would not let O'Brien out of his contract. Eventually, NBC and O'Brien split the cost to get him out of the contract. During pre-production, writer Robert Smigel suggested fellow writer Andy Richter to sit beside O'Brien and act as a sidekick. After O'Brien's departure, the writers at The Simpsons would watch videotaped episodes of Late Night at lunch the day following their midnight broadcast and analyze them.
He has served as the master of ceremonies for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C. twice, in 1995 and 2013. In 2016, O'Brien hosted the 5th NFL Honors in San Francisco, California. He also hosted a reunion special in Northern Ireland for Game of Thrones in 2018 for the final season of the series. The special was released on HBO Max in 2021.
O'Brien often speaks about his Irish Catholic heritage. On a 2009 episode of Inside the Actors Studio, he stated that ancestors from both sides of his family moved to America from Ireland starting in the 1850s, subsequently marrying only other Irish Catholics, and that his lineage is thus 100% Irish Catholic. His entirely homogenous ancestry was confirmed via DNA test a decade later, which he shared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. O'Brien noted that being entirely descended from just one ethnic group is extremely rare for an American, and that his being so "shocked" his doctor.
On June 12, 2011, O'Brien was awarded an honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Dartmouth College. In addition to the honorary degree, he delivered the commencement speech. On October 21, 2011, O'Brien was ordained as a minister by the Universal Life Church Monastery, allowing him to perform a same-sex marriage in New York, then one of the few states in the US where gay marriage was legal, to tape a week's worth of shows. The wedding, between a member of O'Brien's staff and his partner, was held on the stage of the Beacon Theatre on November 3, 2011, and broadcast on Conan. The same-sex marriage ceremony was the first to be broadcast on American late night television.
