Eugene Levy

The 1972 Toronto Godspell cast reads like a prophetic joke: Eugene Levy, Gilda Radner, Martin Short, and Paul Shaffer, all on the same Royal Alexandra stage. SCTV and SNL split them four years later, and Levy spent the early 1980s at SCTV winning back-to-back Emmy Awards for writing. American Pie (1999) almost wasn't his. He reportedly thought the character was too hip for him to play. He agreed only after the directors let him improvise, and wound up as the only cast member in all eight films.

Schitt's Creek swept all seven major Emmy comedy categories in 2020. No show had done it before. Levy won Lead Actor; Dan won Supporting Actor the same night, a father-son first. Four years later, they co-hosted the 76th Emmys and landed shots at The Bear for passing off a stress spiral as comedy. His Hollywood Walk of Fame star came in March 2024. He bet his reputation on his kid's show, and the industry spent the next four years catching up.

His mother came from a Glasgow Jewish family, his father from Sephardic Jewish roots. That's an unusual combination, and it tracks for a man who's spent his career in unlikely intersections. He won a Grammy in 2004 for Best Song Written for Visual Media, for the folk mockumentary A Mighty Wind, a film most people have forgotten. He spent years insisting his kids grow up in Toronto, not Hollywood, which feels like a parenting philosophy until you realize his son Dan became his most important creative partner.