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:
“Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl.”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“We find it easy to set limits when the issue is safety.... But 99 percent of the time there isn’t imminent danger; most of life takes place on more ambiguous ground, and children are experts at detecting ambivalence.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)