Greg Giraldo - Early Life

Early Life

Gregory C. Giraldo was born in The Bronx and was raised in a predominantly Irish lower-middle-class neighborhood in Queens. His father, Alfonso, was from Colombia and worked for Pan Am, and his mother, Dolores, was from Spain. Giraldo was the oldest of three children (brother John and sister Elizabeth) and was raised Roman Catholic. Giraldo spoke fluent Spanish and also knew how to play the guitar, having played in a band while he was in his late teens/early twenties.

Giraldo was an excellent student and was accepted into the prestigious Regis High School in Manhattan. After graduating from Regis in 1983, he went on to earn a bachelor's degree in English from Columbia University in 1987 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1990. While at Columbia, he was an active member of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity. Giraldo was admitted to Harvard Law School after he achieved a near perfect score on his LSAT (Law School Admission Test), scoring in the 99th percentile of students taking the test.

Before becoming a comedian, Giraldo worked as a lawyer, spending eight months as an associate for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom before changing his occupation.

One of the cases that Giraldo handled was an inciting a riot charge, which was brought against his friend and fellow comedian, Jeffrey Ross, in 1993. Ross was performing at a comedy club on Long Island, when a member of the audience produced a toy gun, which looked very similar to a real gun. Ross then grabbed the gun and started fighting with the audience member, and ended up getting arrested.

Said Ross of the incident: "I had to go to court and Greg volunteered to be my attorney as a favor. I remember we slept in his parents' basement in Queens. We drove to court in a Jeep and had dirty blue sport jackets on. It took him two tries, but he got the case dismissed."

Giraldo stated that at the time of the case, he had never done anything in a courtroom before, and nearly ended up sending Ross to jail, when the case was upgraded to a weapons charge and he had nearly told Ross to plead guilty. "The judge called us over...and I had to plead, 'I have no idea what I'm doing here.' We ended up having to get a real lawyer and come back a month later," said Giraldo.

Giraldo said of his decision to leave the legal profession: "My family was disappointed. But I always wanted to do something creative. I've always had real trouble knowing what my actual desires and goals are. I've just been dragged along by fate. I can't even tell you why I thought to go to law school."

He also stated: "Because I went to Harvard Law School it seemed like I had my shit together, but I did only because it’s not hard. Everyone is so self motivated that they leave you alone. You get study outlines and just cram, but then when you get out into the real world, it gets tricky. Most comedians are people who couldn’t really work in the real world, they’re too disorganized, too lazy, too fucked up, too erratic, too unstable. If you could work in the real world you would have stayed there because it is so many years of misery in comedy before you really start popping."

In August 2000, Giraldo was featured in an Esquire magazine article, which profiled several members of the Harvard Law School Class of 1990, who ended up choosing different career paths other than the legal profession. Despite his prior career, Giraldo rejected that persona and very rarely discussed his days as a lawyer.