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Larry David (born 1947) is an actor, writer, comedian and producer. He's most famous for being the co-creator and Show Runner of Seinfeld, and the creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he stars As Himself.
He began his career as a stand-up comedian, and was a writer for Saturday Night Live between 1984-85, without much success. In 1989, along with comedian Jerry Seinfeld, he created the revolutionary Sitcom Seinfeld, which went on to became one of the most popular shows of The Nineties. Seinfeld was so successful, that pretty much everything about it was copied. David based the character George Costanza, probably the biggest jerk in a show about jerks, on himself. He had many bit parts on the show (usually offscreen voices), the most memorable being the voice of George Steinbrenner. He left Seinfeld after the seventh season, but returned to write the finale.
In 1998, he wrote and directed a movie called Sour Grapes, which was a failure. In 1999, he made a one-hour long special for HBO, called Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm. The special was a Faux Documentary about him preparing for an HBO special, and eventually weaseling out of it. It was originally envisioned as a one-time project, but it was so successful, that in 2000, David created Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he plays himself as a selfish, annoying, neurotic Jerkass. As of 2012, Curb had eight seasons, with ten episodes each, due to David writing all the episodes. In 2009, he played the main role, a misantrophic Lemony Narrator, in the Woody Allen film Whatever Works.
Provides examples of:[]
- Adam Westing
- Author Avatar: George Costanza on Seinfeld. On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry tries to play George in the episode "Seinfeld", when he organizes a Seinfeld reunion show, but Jason Alexander (who played him) quits.
- Bald of Awesome
- Sit Comic
- Self-Deprecation: His Author Avatar is an annoying Jerkass, and he portrays himself as one on Curb.
- So My Kids Can Watch: He guest-starred in an episode of Hannah Montana along with his daughters, because they're fans of the show.
- Write Who You Know: In Seinfeld, apart from George, Kramer was based on David's neighbor Kenny Kramer, and Elaine is a Composite Character, partially based on women who David and Jerry Seinfeld dated. Several Seinfeld plots were based on David's real-life experiences, such as George quitting his job and trying to return as if nothing had happened (David did that when he was a writer at SNL).
- Even worse was when Jason Alexander wanted to change an element of what George did, basically saying that no one could be that selfish. David replied out that he had done exactly what George was written as doing in real life.