Jon Lovitz

Jonathan Michael Lovitz (; born July 21, 1957) is an American actor and comedian. Lovitz is best known for his tenure as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1990. Outside of SNL, he starred as Jay Sherman in The Critic and played a baseball scout in A League of Their Own. He has performed in 20 episodes of The Simpsons. Early life Lovitz was born on July 21, 1957, in the Tarzana neighborhood of Los Angeles, to Harold and Barbara Lovitz. His family is Jewish, and emigrated from Romania, Hungary, and Russia. His paternal grandfather, Feivel Ianculovici, left Romania around 1914. After arriving in the United States, he Americanized his name to Phillip Lovitz. In a 2011 interview, Lovitz described his comedic influences: "When I was 13, I saw Woody Allen's movie Take The Money and Run, and I wanted to be a comedian. Then when I was 16, I saw the movie Lenny, about Lenny Bruce, starring Dustin Hoffman. I thought the movie was so great, and I'd never heard of Lenny, so I went to the record store because I wanted to hear the real guy. Then I saw that Woody Allen had a record. I didn't know he had been a standup. So, I bought Woody Allen: The Nightclub Years, '64-'68. I learned their routines and performed them at my college dorm. That was at U.C. Irvine. I was a drama major there. In imitating their routines, I learned a lot about writing. You learn how to write a joke. I was influenced by them a lot, the way I say something, the timing or whatever. Or Jack Benny, sometimes I'll go, 'Well....'" In college, Lovitz was friends with David Kudrow, brother of Lisa Kudrow, and went on a backpacking trip across Europe and Israel with him in 1978. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in drama in 1979, then studied acting with Tony Barr at the Film Actors Workshop. He became a member of the Groundlings comedy troupe, where he befriended his future SNL castmate Phil Hartman.