Paul Dinello

Paul E. Dinello (born November 28, 1962) is an American comedian, actor, and writer, best known for his collaborations with Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris. He portrayed Geoffrey Jellineck on Comedy Central's Strangers with Candy, and later became a writer and supervising producer for The Colbert Report and then The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Early life Dinello was born in Oak Park, Illinois to Frank Anthony Dinello, the head of DePaul University's Mental Health Clinic, and Ann Lee Dinello (née Zeiler). He's the fourth of five siblings: Donna, Lori, Linda and David. His uncle Dan Dinello, who piqued his interest in directing, is an independent filmmaker and professor emeritus at Columbia College Chicago. Dinello graduated from Oak Park River Forest High School and later attended DePaul University where he graduated from its College of Communications in 1985. He is also an alumnus of Chicago-based The Second City, Improv Institute, and Annoyance Theatre. Career In the late 1980s, he was hired to perform with Second City's touring company. It was there where he met Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert with whom he often collaborated later in his career. By their retelling, the three comedians did not get along at first – Dinello thought Colbert was uptight, pretentious and cold, while Colbert thought of Dinello as "a semi-literate thug" – but the trio became close friends while touring together, discovering that they shared a similar comic sensibility. In 2003, Second City senior associate producer Beth Kligerman called him "the most handsome person to come out of 43 years of Second City."