Chris Farley
The physical-comedy wrecking ball of '90s SNL — total commitment, full-body chaos, every moment played like the funniest thing that had ever happened. From Matt Foley's van down by the river to the Chippendales audition opposite Patrick Swayze, nobody gave more to a sketch than Chris Farley.
Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Farley earned his comedy chops at Chicago's Second City, where he was promoted to the main stage in 1989, and brought that full-body theatricality to Saturday Night Live in 1990.
His five SNL seasons, 1990 to 1995, became legendary. Matt Foley — the desk-pounding motivational speaker living "in a van down by the river," a character created with Bob Odenkirk back at Second City — became the thing everyone imitated at recess. The Chippendales audition opposite Patrick Swayze and Todd O'Connor of Bill Swerski's Superfans ("Da Bears") were physical theater taken to the logical extreme: Farley played everything for the back row, holding nothing in reserve.
On film he teamed with his closest comic partner, David Spade, for Tommy Boy (1995) and Black Sheep (1996) — each earned around $32 million — and headlined Beverly Hills Ninja (1997). On December 18, 1997, Farley died of a drug overdose in Chicago at age 33. He left behind the template for a certain kind of comedian — all heart, no filter, spending everything he had for the laugh.
Similar items
Adam Sandler
The SNL goofball who became a box-office machine — Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy. In the '90s his man-child comedies and shouty voices made him one of the most bankable comedians alive.
Pauly Shore
MTV's most relentless goofball — The Weasel, all surfer-dude Valley-speak, somehow the defining voice of early-90s cable. Pauly Shore rode that energy into a five-film leading-man run that shrank at the box office with every release while the Razzies stacked up. Then he made a mockumentary about the wreckage, because he was always in on the joke.
Will Ferrell
For most of a decade, the comedy playing at the multiplex WAS Will Ferrell. From SNL's George W. Bush and More Cowbell to Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers — his movies got recited line-for-line before the credits rolled.
Jim Carrey
The Canadian comic who became the biggest movie star on the planet in a single calendar year. In 1994, Ace Ventura, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber made Jim Carrey the hyperkinetic face of the decade — rubber-faced, fearless, and everywhere.