Judd Apatow

Judd Apatow (born December 6, 1967, Syosset, New York, U.S.) is an American writer, director, and producer known for creating offbeat comedies featuring unconventional protagonists.

Apatow was a self-described awkward, undersized child who was always picked last for school sports teams. He was deeply scarred as a youth by his parents’ divorce, and his anger over their breakup would become a recurring theme in his later work. He found his niche as the host of Club Comedy, a radio show at Syosset High School, in which he interviewed established professional comedians, including Garry Shandling, Steven Wright, and Jerry Seinfeld. At age 16 he began working as a dishwasher at a comedy club and soon launched his own stand-up act.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

After high-school graduation, Apatow enrolled in the screenwriting program at the University of Southern California (USC). His tenure at USC lasted only about two years, however, and he returned briefly to stand-up before becoming a joke writer for other comedians, notably Roseanne Barr. In his mid-20s Apatow worked as a producer of television programs for fellow comedians Ben Stiller and Shandling. In 1996 he rewrote the script for The Cable Guy, starring Jim Carrey, but his work for that film was uncredited. Apatow pursued but ultimately dropped a lawsuit to list his name as a screenwriter.

Apatow went on to develop two critically acclaimed television series, Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, in 1999 and 2001 respectively. Though both shows were canceled after just one season, their young actors would become Apatow’s cinematic family, reappearing in his subsequent projects. In 2005 Apatow finally achieved unqualified success when he wrote, directed, and produced the surprise hit movie The 40-Year-Old Virgin, starring Steve Carell, an actor Apatow met while producing the 2004 film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy.

In 2007 Apatow became one of Hollywood’s leading figures in comedy entertainment with the release of two films, Knocked Up and Superbad. Like much of his previous work, the movies drew heavily on his personal youthful experiences and featured unconventional protagonists played by largely unknown, average-looking male actors. In Knocked Up—written, directed, and produced by Apatow—a 20-something slacker (played by Seth Rogen) is forced to grow up after impregnating a beautiful, successful woman (Katherine Heigl). Superbad, which Apatow produced, features a trio of teenage boys trying to seduce the girls of their dreams before they head off to college. The films’ combined success resurrected the R-rated sex comedy and firmly established Apatow’s reputation.

Apatow subsequently wrote and produced Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), a biopic parody that follows a musician’s exaggerated struggles with divorce and drugs when he becomes famous. He wrote, directed, and produced Funny People (2009), about a stand-up comic (Adam Sandler) who is diagnosed with a terminal blood disorder, and This Is 40 (2012), which revisited two supporting characters from Knocked Up now facing the midlife frustrations of marriage and family.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

Other comedy films produced by Apatow included the NASCAR spoof Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), starring Will Ferrell; the buddy movie Pineapple Express (2008), featuring Rogen and James Franco; and the Jason Segel-starring romantic comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) and The Five-Year Engagement (2012). In a change for Apatow, the movie Bridesmaids (2011) and the HBO TV series Girls (2012–17), both of which he produced, focused primarily on female characters. He both produced and directed Trainwreck (2015), a comedy written by and starring stand-up comedian Amy Schumer. The film concerns an unabashedly promiscuous young woman who, despite her aversion to romance, falls in love.

Apatow next cocreated the romantic comedy series Love (2016–18) for streaming video provider Netflix. He also produced the HBO series Crashing (2017–19), about a comic whose wife leaves him; Apatow directed and wrote several episodes as well. He later cowrote and directed the films The King of Staten Island (2020), a dramedy about a young man struggling after the death of his father, and The Bubble (2022), a pandemic comedy in which a group of actors attempt to make a movie.

In 2018 Apatow directed and produced the Emmy Award-winning documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling. The two-part work chronicled the life and career of the iconic comedian. Apatow later edited It’s Garry Shandling’s Book (2019), which included journal entries and photographs. Apatow’s other books included Sick in the Head (2015) and Sicker in the Head (2022), both of which centre on his conversations with various comedians.