Ed Helms
Helms at the Dublin premiere for The Hangover, June 2009
Born	Edward Parker Helms (1974-01-24) January 24, 1974 (age 38) Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Occupation	Actor/comedian
Years active	2002–present

Edward Parker "Ed" Helms^[1][2] (born January 24, 1974) is an American actor and comedian known for his work as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, as Andy Bernard on the US version of the sitcom/mockumentary The Office and for his role as Dr. Stu Price in The Hangover films.

Early life[link]

Helms was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. His mother was a school administrator and his father was an attorney.^[3] He graduated from The Westminster Schools in 1992 a year after his Office co-star Brian Baumgartner. Originally a geology major, Helms graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in film theory and technology in 1996 and spent a semester as an exchange student at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.^[4][5]

After graduating from Oberlin, Helms began his comedy and acting career as a writer and performer with New York City sketch comedy bands, and studied improvisation with the Upright Citizens Brigade troupe.^[6]

Helms concurrently worked as a trainee film editor at Crew Cuts, a post-production facility in New York City. While doing so, he recorded some rough voiceover scratch tracks that eventually led to paying voiceover work, which in turn led to finding a talent agent.^[7]

Career[link]

Television work[link]

Helms was performing comedy in New York City when, as he recalled in a 2005 interview, "The Daily Show had a sort of open audition with a casting company that I had dealt with. I read for the part, and got it".^[8] In his April 2002 to mid-2006 tenure on the satirical news program, Helms contributed "field reports" in addition to hosting various segments of the show, such as Digital Watch, Ad Nauseam, and Mark Your Calendar. He has also contributed to the This Week in God segment. Helms left the show in 2006, but has occasionally returned for brief appearances. On July 21, 2008 he returned for Obama Quest – a segment covering then-Senator Barack Obama's trip to Iraq. He occasionally narrates the Prescott Group educational films on sister series The Colbert Report.

In late July 2006, NBC announced that Helms would join the cast of the mockumentary The Office, along with his fellow The Daily Show correspondent Steve Carell, in a recurring role as Andy Bernard. Helms has been a series regular since the third season.^[9] "He had so much in common with this character we wanted to create," recalled Paul Lieberstein, a writer for the show who also plays Toby Flenderson, the human resources director at the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin. "I can't remember when they starting merging."^[10]