Early Life
Sparks was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but grew up in the small community of Peaks Mill, Kentucky. He started Cub Scouts at age 7 and karate at age 8, and filled his childhood between video games, movies, and comedy albums since the nearest TV was a mile from where he lived.
When he was 14 years old, he moved to the Chicago area and enrolled at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, where he entered the theater department. Thanks to an influential teacher named Mrs. Adams, he was able to cultivate his natural talent and boundless energy into marketable skill. Despite some initial opposition by his father, by 15 he began performing standup comedy and by 17 he won the title of "Chicago's Funniest Teenager" from the Chicago Sun-Times.
He also studied with the Second City comedy troupe in Chicago as a teenager.
Read more about this topic: Hal Sparks
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don’t need parents’ full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)