- published: 22 May 2016
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Fereydun Robert "Fred" Armisen (born December 4, 1966) is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, producer, director, singer, musician, and comedian.
Widely known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2002 until 2013, Armisen has portrayed characters in comedy films, including EuroTrip, Anchorman, and Cop Out. With his comedy partner Carrie Brownstein, Armisen is the co-creator and co-star of the IFC sketch comedy series Portlandia. Armisen founded ThunderAnt.com, a website that features the comedy sketches created with Brownstein, and is the bandleader for the Late Night with Seth Meyers house band, The 8G Band.
For his work on Portlandia, Armisen was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2014. He has also won two Peabody Awards, one in 2008 as part of the Saturday Night Live political satire cast and one in 2011 for Portlandia.
Armisen was born on December 4, 1966, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and moved to Manhattan, New York City, as a baby. He was raised in Valley Stream, New York, on Long Island, where he was a high school classmate of fellow SNL alumnus Jim Breuer. His mother, Hildegardt Mirabal, a schoolteacher, is from Venezuela. His father, Fereydun (later "Fred") Armisen, who worked for IBM, was born in Germany, to a Japanese father and a German mother. Armisen attended the School of Visual Arts (NYC) before dropping out to begin a career as a rock drummer. He has mentioned watching the bands The Clash and Devo perform on television, and wanting to be a performer since he was a child.