Sam Simon

Sam Simon

Samuel "Sam" Simon (born June 6, 1955) is an American director, producer, writer, boxing manager and philanthropist. While at Stanford University, Simon worked as a newspaper cartoonist and after graduating became a storyboard artist at Filmation Studios. He submitted a spec script for the sitcom Taxi, which was produced, and later became the series' showrunner. Over the next few years, Simon wrote and produced for Cheers, It's Garry Shandling's Show and other programs, as well as writing the 1991 film The Super.

In 1989 he developed the animated comedy series The Simpsons, along with Matt Groening and James L. Brooks. Simon assembled the show's first writing team, co-wrote eight episodes and has been credited with "developing sensibility". Simon's relationship with Groening was strained and he left the show in 1993, negotiating a pay-off which sees him receive tens of millions of dollars from the show's revenue each year. The following year he co-created The George Carlin Show, before later working as a director on shows such as The Drew Carey Show. Simon has won nine Primetime Emmy Awards for his television work.

Simon has since turned to fields outside of television: he regularly appears on Howard Stern's radio shows, managed boxer Lamon Brewster and helped guide him to the World Boxing Organization Heavyweight Championship in 2004 and is a regular poker player and six-time in the money finisher at the World Series of Poker. Amongst his numerous charitable efforts, Simon runs the Sam Simon Foundation, which rescues and trains stray dogs and funded the Sea Shepherd vessel the MY Sam Simon, which was named after him. He has been married twice, including to the actress Jennifer Tilly, and is currently engaged. Following a profile of Simon on 60 Minutes in 2007, CBS writer Daniel Schorn wrote in an online article that Simon was "perhaps the Renaissance man of the baffling, uncertain age we live in."