Bill Burr - Life and Career

Life and Career

Burr was born in Canton, Massachusetts. His father was a dentist, and Bill worked as a dental hygienist for a short time. He began stand-up at age 23 after attending Emerson College, where he majored in Radio. Burr also had an early morning slot on college radio during this period. In 1995, he moved to New York City and lived there for eight months. Burr then moved to Los Angeles, California, where he worked on a number of film and television projects. He returned to New York in 1999 and moved back to Los Angeles in 2008. Burr stands 5'10" in height, is left handed, and is of German and Irish descent.

He performs over three hundred shows annually, had two movies released in 2006, and has performed on the Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. In early 2004, he appeared in five episodes of Chappelle's Show, and in September 2005, his HBO One Night Stand special aired. Along with many other projects, Burr has also been a guest comedian on the Bob and Tom Show as well as on the Opie and Anthony Show on XM Satellite Radio, sometimes sitting in when third member Jim Norton is away. He has also performed on the Comedy Central Presents show.

On December 16, 2006, Burr hosted a three-hour radio show on Opie and Anthony's XM radio channel program The Virus (channel 202) titled "Uninformed with Bill Burr & Joe DeRosa" from 9pm-12am. The second Uninformed show aired February 10, 2007 from 9pm-12am, and the show has continued to run on an irregular schedule about once a month. Since Burr's move to Los Angeles, it has primarily been a pre-taped show, rather than live. The show's collection of free podcasts can be found at uninformedradio.com.

In September 2007, Burr signed with Colorado independent label What Are Records?. An expanded version of his 2003 debut album Emotionally Unavailable was released October 16, 2007. Emotionally Unavailable carries content previously available only in Burr’s stand-up shows. It features a completely unedited set with Burr covering topics from rednecks to inadvertent racism to relationship books to crazy people on the subway. The Expanded Edition augments that album with previously unreleased highlights from a different tour - the Houston stop of the I’m Rich Biatch Tour which Bill co-headlined with Chappelle's Show cast mates Charlie Murphy and Donnell Rawlings. Much of the material from this tour later turned up on Burr’s HBO stand-up special.

As with other comics associated with The Opie & Anthony Show, in 2008, Burr's voice was featured in the game Grand Theft Auto IV. In the game, Bill plays Jason Michaels of the biker gang the The Lost MC in the mission "No Love Lost". In 2009, he reprised his role in the game's expansion pack The Lost and Damned.

Burr's special entitled Let It Go, premiered on Comedy Central on September 18, 2010 and was shot at The Fillmore West in San Francisco, California.

Burr's special entitled You People Are All The Same, premiered in 2012 as a Netflix exclusive.

Bill Burr has been referred to as a "comedian's comedian" by observers of the US stand-up comedy circuit, meaning a comedian whose work is being followed and appreciated by fellow professional comedians. He is a Boston Bruins fan and periodically blogs for NHL.com.

Burr's brother, Robert, is a selectman from Canton, Massachusetts and was briefly a candidate to fill Massachusetts' vacant seat in the United States Senate after Ted Kennedy's death in 2009.

Burr appeared in the movie Date Night as Detective Walsh. He has also appeared in seasons 4 and 5 of AMC's Breaking Bad as Kuby.