Sardonic, deadpan and drier than a desert at noon, this bespectacled satirist became such a popular correspondent on the mock-news series The Daily Show that he earned his own spin-off. Growing up in South Carolina, Colbert suffered tragedy early on when his father and two of his 10 siblings were killed in a 1974 plane crash. He took solace in acting, and, after graduating from college with a theater degree, he joined Chicago's celebrated Second City, where he met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello. The trio went on to create and star in two cult Comedy Central series: the critically acclaimed, if short-lived, sketch show Exit 57, and the after-school-specials spoof Strangers with Candy, which spawned a film of the same name. During his Candy run, Colbert pulled double comedic duty on The Daily Show, fashioning the unsmiling, uninformed conservative persona that became his trademark. In 2005, his Republican alter ego became the darling of the liberal set on The Colbert Report, a parody of egotistical, Bill O'Reilly-type opinion shows.