Finding your talents after Graduation Day

BY CLAIRE LYNCH

Comedian and actor Will Ferrell graduated from college and is proud of it although he makes fun of the fact that his major, Sports Information, is no longer an option for a major at the University of Southern California.

John William Ferrell was born on July 16, 1967, in Irvine, Calif., to Betty Kay, a teacher who taught at Old Mill School elementary school and Santa Ana College and Roy Lee Ferrell Jr., who played the saxophone and keyboards for the Righteous Brothers. His parents were both natives of Roanoke Rapids, NC, and they moved to California in 1964. He has a younger brother, Patrick.

Ferrell attended Culverdale Elementary School and Rancho San Joaquin Middle School both in Irvine. He attended University High School in Irvine and on the school’s varsity football team he was a kicker. He was on the soccer team, was captain of the basketball team and served on the student council.

Ferrell has said, “Growing up in suburbia, in safe, master-planned Irvine, there was no drama so we had to create it in our heads. My main form of entertainment was cracking my friends up and exploring new ways of being funny. I didn’t have to have the survival mode instinct like other comics, who grew up in tough neighborhoods. I had the opposite. For me, I grew up in Mayberry, and the humor broke the boredom.”

In high school, Ferrell got laughs for reading the high school’s morning announcements over the intercom system using a variety of voices. Ferrell also performed comedy skits in the school’s talent shows. He was voted “Best Personality” by his classmates. Enrolling at the University of Southern California, he joined the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. In college, he was known for doing a few pranks.

After graduating with a B.A. degree in Sports Information in 1990, Ferrell worked as a sports broadcaster on local cable but he didn’t enjoy broadcasting. He took a job as a hotel valet and worked as a teller at Wells Fargo, but those didn’t work out either. In 1991 Ferrell moved to Los Angeles because his mother had suggested pursuing a career he would enjoy. In 1994 Ferrell successfully auditioned for the comedy group The Groundlings where he spent time developing his improvisation skills.

A “Saturday Night Live” producer saw The Groundlings and asked Ferrell, Chris Kattan and Cheri Oteri to audition for SNL’s main producer, Lorne Michaels for the next season. Ferrell joined “Saturday Night Live” in 1995 and left in 2002 after a seven-year run. He has also hosted the show five times. His impersonations included President George W. Bush, Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray, singer Robert Goulet, singer Neil Diamond and more.

Besides being a cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” Will Ferrell starred in such big-screen comedies as “Elf,” the 2004 comedy film “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “Talladega Nights.” “Zoolander” came out in 2001 and Ferrell played Mugatu.

The 2003 movie, “Elf” is one of the top-rated Christmas movies - it’s a Will Ferrell classic - but when he was asked which movie he was in was his favorite, Ferrell said he liked doing the part of Ron Burgundy alongside co-star Christina Applegate in “Anchorman” because, “The film was such a struggle to get made and the character such a fun one to play.”

The pros noted that “Anchorman” was famously full of improvisers and it was full of whimsical additions to the script. Scriptwriters spend hours writing their scripts but sometimes the actors simply go off script. The line, “I’m in a glass case of emotion,” spoken by Will Ferrell, is so perfect that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t scripted.

In 2011 he received the Mark Twain

Prize for American Humor. On May 12, 2017, Ferrell received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree from the University of Southern California before delivering the school’s commencement address. He inspired the students to go forward and try to succeed at what they really want to do - and to remember that quite often failure comes before succeeding.

Ferrell told the audience, “For those of you graduates sitting out there who have a pretty good idea of what you want to do with your life, congratulations. For many of you who maybe don’t have it all figured out, that’s OK. That’s the same chair that I sat in. Enjoy the process of your search without succumbing to the pressure of the result. Trust your gut. Keep throwing darts at the dartboard. Don’t listen to the critics, and you will figure it out.

“So I graduate and I immediately get a job right out of college working for ESPN, right? Wrong. No, I moved right back home. Back home to the mean streets of Irvine, California. Yes. Irvine always gets that response. Pretty great success story, right? Yeah, I moved back home for a solid two years, I might add. And I was lucky, actually. Lucky that I had a very supportive and understanding mother who let me move back home. And she recognized that while I had an interest in pursuing sportscasting, my gut was telling me that I really wanted to pursue something else. And that something else was comedy.

“For you see, the seeds for this journey were planted right here on this campus. This campus was a theater or testing lab if you will. I was always trying to make my friends laugh …”

Ferrell met Swedish actress Viveca Paulin in 1995 in an acting class, around the time that Ferrell was very popular on SNL, and became fast friends. After several years the friendship took a romantic turn, and the two tied the knot in August 2000.

The Ferrells divide their time between New York City and Orange County, California. They have three sons: Magnus was in born in 2004, Mattias was born in 2006 and Axel was born in 2010.

Happy Graduation to all!