Bio
Brad Garrett is an American actor best known for his role as Ray Barone's brother Robert in the award-winning sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, from 1996-2005.
He also starred as Eddie Stark in the sitcom 'Til Death, from 2006-2010.
Born to Jewish parents, Garrett's father was a hearing aid specialist working in geriatrics and his mother a housewife.
He attended Hale Junior High School in Woodland Hills, California and graduated from El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills in 1978. He attended UCLA for less than two months before dropping out to pursue his comedy career.
He started out at various improv clubs in Los Angeles, including The Improv in Hollywood and The Ice House in Pasadena.
In 1984, he became the first $100,000 grand champion winner in the comedy category of the TV show Star Search. This led to his first appearance, at age 23, on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, making him one of the youngest comedians ever to perform on the show.
His appearance with Carson brought Garrett a lot of national attention, and soon he was appearing as an opening act for such headliners as Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli.
He also worked in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra, David Copperfield, Smokey Robinson, Sammy Davis, Jr., the Beach Boys, and Julio Iglesias.
After achieving a strong measure of success with stand-up comedy, Garrett decided to change gears and try his luck with performing on TV.
He was the voice of wrestling legend Hulk Hogan for the short-lived cartoon series Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n Wrestling and was featured on Family Feud during Ray Combs's tenure during a Funny Men vs. Funny Women week during November sweeps.
He then appeared in the short-lived summer comedy First Impressions in 1988, in which he was a divorced father who makes a living doing impressions, and The Pursuit of Happiness from 1995-96, in which he was the hero's gay best friend.
Though prior to these roles, Garrett had also had a minor part on Transformers, voicing the Decepticon base Trypticon in season three and as an ill-fated thug in Suicide Kings.
He soon won the role of Ray Romano's brother Robert Barone on the family-oriented comedy Everybody Loves Raymond.
Garrett's distinctive deep voice has landed him notable work as a voice actor, such as on the animated series 2 Stupid Dogs, Project Geeker, A Bug's Life, Asterix and the Vikings and Finding Nemo.
He also provided the voice of Hulk Hogan in the World Wrestling Federation Rock 'N' Wrestling cartoons of the 1980s.
His role on Everybody Loves Raymond won him five Emmy nominations, and the 2002, 2003 and 2005 Emmy Awards for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy.
In 1990, Garrett appeared as a semi-regular panelist on the revival of Match Game.
On the May 2, 1996 episode of the sitcom Seinfeld, entitled "The Bottle Deposit", Garrett played a deranged auto mechanic. That series' ubiquitous syndication ensures frequent repeats of that episode.
In 2003, he was also nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for Gleason.
With his Raymond castmates, he won the 2003 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series.
He won the fifth season championship of Celebrity Poker Showdown, and played in the 2005 and 2006 World Series of Poker.
Garrett was hoping to do a spinoff with his character Robert Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond when the show ended its nine-year run on TV in 2005, but he withdrew in October 2005 due to inaction from CBS that led to a number of the writers from Raymond leaving and taking other jobs.
In 2005, Garrett appeared on Broadway playing Murray the Cop in the revival of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.
In 2006 FOX network announced they would pick up a new sitcom called 'Til Death starring Brad Garrett in the lead role. The plot revolves around a long married couple whose new next door neighbours are a pair of feisty newlyweds.
Joely Fisher (daughter of Connie Stevens and Eddie Fisher) plays Garrett's wife in the series.
In 1998, Garrett proposed to his then girlfriend Jill Diven on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond and they were married on May 18, 1999. Their first child, Maxwell Bradley Garrett, was born on October 14, 1998; their second child, daughter Hope Garrett, was born in January 2000.
Garrett and Diven separated in 2005 and Diven filed for divorce in July 2006.