Al Franken

Al Franken was a comedy writer for a very long time before he was anything else. Born in New York City in 1951, he wrote and performed on Saturday Night Live, holds a Primetime Emmy for writing for a variety series, and then did something almost nobody in American comedy has done: he won a Senate seat. He represented Minnesota as a Democrat from 2009 until his resignation in 2018.

His film credits are a writer's cameo trail rather than an acting career. Baggage Handler #1 in Trading Places. An uncredited co-pilot in When a Man Loves a Woman. A television commentator in the 2004 Manchurian Candidate. Himself in Harvard Man. These are favours, in-jokes and days on set, and there is no pretence otherwise.

The exception is Stuart Saves His Family, the 1995 feature built out of his SNL character Stuart Smalley. It is the most interesting thing in the filmography by a distance, because it takes an affirmation-spouting cable self-help host and puts him in a film about a family with a drinking problem, and it declines to bail out into a joke when things get uncomfortable. It is a stranger and better film than the sketch it grew out of.

Everything after that is mostly Franken as himself: The Daily Show, Conan, the SNL anniversary specials, An Inconvenient Sequel, The Words That Built America. The oddest credit here by far is Mayor McCheese in the animated Clerks series. The most recent turn is scripted again, as Aaron Filkins in The Residence.