Biografía

Son of Bob Elliott (of "Bob and Ray" fame).

Was considered for the role of Harry Dunne in Una pareja de idiotas (1994).

Grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Turned down an offer to join the cast of Saturday Night Live (1975) in 1986.

He has appeared in one film that has been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Hechizo del tiempo (1993).

It's a cliché to say that dying is easy and comedy's hard, but I do enjoy appearing in dramas because I don't have to worry about getting a laugh. I don't want to say that drama is an easy job for me, because it isn't, but it does carry a different set of challenges.

I'm definitely self-absorbed, otherwise I wouldn't be in this business. But I also live in fear of -- believe it or not -- humiliation. Everything that I do is humiliating even though I've made a living doing it.

I appreciate people being huge fans of mine but I don't see it. I'm not being humble and I'm not being hard on myself. I'm not even entirely clear on what I do. I know that it's funny but it's hard for me to talk about it like it's an art form.

[on working on Late Night with David Letterman (1982)] That was really fun, because it was all about making Dave laugh; it wasn't really about making the audience laugh. It was all about coming out there and making sure Dave found whatever you were doing funny. There were plenty of times that I would come out and not necessarily get huge laughs, but Dave would laugh, and I knew that piece worked. And in the end, I think that the audience that was watching Late Night early on, they were seeing things that hadn't been done on TV before, and it was all new, so whether or not it was uproariously funny, I think I at least got points for doing different stuff.

[on working on Loco por Mary (1998)] A part that I think anybody could have - it was really funny on the page right away. That was one of those scripts that I read and laughed out loud at, which I rarely do, so I'm fairly certain that anyone could have plugged into the part and just done the lines in the script and gotten laughs. I added the facial blemishes, after I met with Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly, as kind of a running thing, so I guess I feel like I contributed something to it, but with or without the boil on the eyelid, it still was a character just funny on the page. I can't take much credit for that.