Seth MacFarlane — Movies, TV Shows & Roles

Composer · crew · Producer · Actor · Director · Writer

1973-10-26 · Kent, Connecticut, USA · Male

62 series in the catalog

Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (; born October 26, 1973) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, comedian, and singer. He is the creator and star of the television series Family Guy and The Orville, and co-creator of the television series American Dad! and The Cleveland Show. He co-wrote, co-produced, directed and starred in the films Ted, its sequel Ted 2 and A Million Ways to Die in the West.
MacFarlane is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied animation. He was recruited as an animator and writer for Hanna-Barbera's television series Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken and Dexter's Laboratory. During this time, he created the animated short Larry & Steve—a loose precursor of Family Guy—for Fred Seibert's What a Cartoon!. In 2008, he created the online series Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. MacFarlane has made guest appearances as an actor on live action shows, including Gilmore Girls, Star Trek: Enterprise, The War at Home and FlashForward. MacFarlane has won several awards for his work on Family Guy, including five Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2009, he won the Webby Award for Film & Video Person of the Year.
MacFarlane has performed as a vocalist at the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. He has released ten studio albums, in the vein of Frank Sinatra, with influences from jazz orchestrations, and Hollywood musicals, beginning with Music Is Better Than Words (2011). MacFarlane has received five Grammy Award nominations. He has frequently collaborated with artists such as Sara Bareilles, Norah Jones and Elizabeth Gillies on his albums. He hosted the 85th Academy Awards in 2013 and was nominated for Best Original Song for "Everybody Needs a Best Friend" from Ted.
MacFarlane was executive producer of the Neil deGrasse Tyson-hosted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, an update of the 1980s Cosmos series hosted by Carl Sagan. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019 and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2020.
Early life and education
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane was born on October 26, 1973, in Kent, Connecticut. His parents, Ronald Milton MacFarlane (born 1946) and Ann Perry (née Sager; 1947–2010), were born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His younger sister Rachael is a voice actress. His maternal grandfather, Arthur Sager, competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics in track and field. His parents met in 1970 when they lived and worked in Boston and married later in 1970. They moved to Kent in 1972, and Ann began working in the admissions office at South Kent School in South Kent, Connecticut. She later worked in the college guidance and admissions offices at the Kent School, a selective college-preparatory school, where Ronald was a teacher.
As a child, Seth MacFarlane developed an interest in illustration, and at the age of two he began drawing cartoon characters, including Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker. By age five, he knew he wanted to pursue a career in animation and began by creating flip books after his parents found a book on the subject for him. At nine, he began publishing a weekly comic strip, Walter Crouton, for The Kent Good Times Dispatch, the local newspaper; it paid him five dollars per week. MacFarlane said that as a child he was always "weirdly fascinated by the communion ceremony". He created a strip with a character kneeling at the altar taking communion and asking, "Can I have fries with that?" The paper printed it, and he got an "angry letter" from the local priest; it led to "sort of a little mini-controversy" in the town. MacFarlane received his high school diploma in 1991 from the Kent School. While there, he continued experimenting with animation, and his parents gave him an 8 mm film camera.
After graduating from high school, MacFarlane attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he majored in animation. As a student, he intended to work for Disney but changed his mind after seeing The Simpsons. During his time at RISD, he performed stand-up comedy. He starred in many student films, meeting future Family Guy cast member Mike Henry, whose brother Patrick was MacFarlane's classmate. In his senior year, he made his thesis film, The Life of Larry, which became the inspiration for Family Guy. A professor submitted his film to the animation studio Hanna-Barbera, where he was later hired. He graduated in 1995 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Hanna-Barbera years
MacFarlane was recruited during the senior film festival by development executive Ellen Cockrill and president Fred Seibert. He went to work at Hanna-Barbera (then Hanna-Barbera Cartoons) based on the writing content of The Life of Larry rather than on his drawing abilities. He was one of only a few people hired by the company solely based on writing talent. He worked as an animator and writer for Cartoon Network's Cartoon Cartoons series. He created Larry & Steve, a sequel to The Life of Larry, featuring middle-aged Larry and his intellectual dog, Steve. The short was broadcast as one of Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons. He described the atmosphere at Hanna-Barbera as resembling an "old-fashioned Hollywood structure, where you move from one show to another or you jump from a writing job on one show to a storyboard job on another". MacFarlane worked on three television series during his tenure at the studio: Dexter's Laboratory, Cow and Chicken and Johnny Bravo. Working as both a writer and storyboard artist, MacFarlane spent the most time on Johnny Bravo. He found it easier to develop his own style at Johnny Bravo through the show's process of scriptwriting, which Dexter's Laboratory and Cow and Chicken did not use. As a part of the Johnny Bravo crew, he met actors and voiceover artists such as Adam West and Jack Sheldon of Schoolhouse Rock! fame. These meetings became significant to the production and success of his Family Guy series.
He did freelance work for Walt Disney Television Animation, writing for Jungle Cubs, and for Nelvana, where he wrote for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. Through strict observation of writing elements such as story progression, character stakes and plot points, MacFarlane found the work for Disney was, from a writing standpoint, very valuable in preparation for his career (particularly on Ace Ventura). He created and wrote a short titled Zoomates for Frederator Studios' Oh Yeah! Cartoons on Nickelodeon. Executives at the Fox Broadcasting Company saw both Larry shorts and negotiations began for a prime-time animated series.
Family Guy
Although MacFarlane enjoyed working at Hanna-Barbera, he felt his calling was for prime-time animation, which would allow a much edgier style of humor. He first pitched Family Guy to Fox during his tenure at Hanna-Barbera. A development executive there, who was trying to get back into prime-time business, introduced MacFarlane to Leslie Kolins and Mike Darnell, heads of the alternative comedy department at Fox. After the success of King of the Hill in 1997, MacFarlane called Kolins once more to ask about a possible second pitch for the series. Fox offered MacFarlane a deal, giving him a budget of $50,000 (equivalent to $100,000 in 2025) to produce a pilot that could lead to a series (most episodes of animated prime-time productions cost at least $1 million). Recalling the experience in an interview with The New York Times, MacFarlane said: "I spent about six months with no sleep and no life, just drawing like crazy in my kitchen and doing this pilot."
After six months, MacFarlane returned to Fox with a "very, very simply, crudely animated film—with just enough to get the tone of the show across" to present to the executives, who loved the pilot and immediately ordered the series. In July 1998, they announced the purchase of Family Guy for a January 1999 debut. Family Guy was originally intended to be a series of shorts on MADtv, much in the same way The Simpsons had begun on The Tracey Ullman Show…