Chris Elliott
Chris Elliott is an actor, born 1960.
Elliott was a writer on Late Night with David Letterman from 1983 to 1988 who kept appearing on the show as a series of hostile lunatics, and his writing there won four consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards. That is the founding fact of a very odd career: he arrived as a professional joke-constructor who happened to be funnier when he stepped in front of the camera.
His particular gift is total confidence with zero self-awareness. His characters are certain they are charming, dangerous or important, and the comedy is the gap between that certainty and the evidence. Get a Life, which he created and starred in on Fox from 1990 to 1992, is that idea taken to its limit, a sitcom actively at war with the form. Cabin Boy in 1994 did the same thing to the adventure film, and its reputation has moved a long way since.
The supporting career is where most people met him. Larry in Groundhog Day, Dom in There's Something About Mary, the Gambler in Kingpin, Hanson in Scary Movie 2 and then Ezekiel in Scary Movie 4, Mickey Aldrin on How I Met Your Mother, and Roland Schitt on Schitt's Creek, which gave the surreal streak a warm show to live in for six seasons. He was also in Manhunter in 1986, playing it entirely straight, which is worth seeing purely for the dissonance.
Movies (20)
- Scary Movie (2026)
- Scary Movie 2 (2001)
- Scary Movie 4 (2006)
- Groundhog Day (1993)
- There's Something About Mary (1998)
- The Abyss (1989)
- Dance Flick (2009)
- Osmosis Jones (2001)
- Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)
- Kingpin (1996)
- The Rewrite (2014)
- Sandy Wexler (2017)
- CB4 (1993)
- Snow Day (2000)
- Cabin Boy (1994)
- Busboys (2026)
- Carved (2024)
- Lianna (1983)
- Stronger Together, Tous Ensemble (2020)
- Manhunter (1986)
TV (22)
- How I Met Your Mother (2005)
- King of the Hill (1997)
- Schitt's Creek (2015)
- Everybody Loves Raymond (1996)
- Late Night with David Letterman (1982)
- According to Jim (2001)
- The Naked Truth (1995)
- Dilbert (1999)
- The Adventures of Pete & Pete (1993)
- Get a Life (1990)
- Get a Life (1990)
- Difficult People (2015)
- Graves (2016)
- Agent Elvis (2023)
- Strip Law (2026)
- The Shivering Truth (2018)
- At Home with Amy Sedaris (2017)
- Maggie (2022)
- Eagleheart (2011)
- Tattingers (1988)
- The Birthday Boys (2013)
- The Weber Show (2000)
Where to start with Chris Elliott
For most people Schitt's Creek is the way in, because Roland is the surreal Elliott persona softened just enough to live inside an ensemble comedy without wrecking it.
Then go backwards to Get a Life, which is the real article: a network sitcom that treats its own genre with open contempt and is still stranger than almost anything on television now. Cabin Boy is the deep cut, and you will know within ten minutes whether you are on board.
For the film work, Groundhog Day and There's Something About Mary are the two everyone has seen, both built on his ability to be enormously irritating on purpose. Scary Movie 2 is the broadest version. How I Met Your Mother is the sitcom guest run, and Manhunter is the one where nobody let him be funny at all.
The Letterman years and Get a Life
The origin of everything: five years writing for Letterman while appearing as increasingly hostile characters, then Get a Life, then Cabin Boy, which was destroyed on release and is now a cult object. Eagleheart is the same sensibility thirty years on.
The film comedies
The Farrelly brothers and the parodies. Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day is ninety seconds and one of the great comic cameos, and There's Something About Mary uses him for something considerably nastier.
The sitcom work
Two decades of sitcom guest work, most of it as somebody unbearable. Schitt's Creek is the one that reached a new audience, and he plays Roland Schitt with total commitment to the character's obliviousness.