Chris Rock Toronto Concert — Next Date & Ticket Alerts

Chris Rock in Toronto — FAQ

About Chris Rock

Chris Rock was born February 7, 1965 in Andrews, South Carolina, and raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, the eldest of seven children. His father, Julius, was a truck driver and newspaper deliveryman; his mother, Rose, was a teacher and social worker. The early-childhood detail of being bussed out of Bed-Stuy to predominantly white schools in Bensonhurst became a recurring anchor in his early stand-up — the bullying, the racial dynamics, the working-class New York frame — and the family was later the basis of the semi-autobiographical sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, which Rock created, narrated, and executive-produced. He dropped out of James Madison High School, eventually earned a GED, and started open-mics in the New York club circuit in the mid-1980s — Catch a Rising Star, the Comic Strip, the Improv, the early downtown rooms. Eddie Murphy spotted him at the Comic Strip Live and put him in Beverly Hills Cop II in 1987 in a small uncredited role; the introduction broadened to a mentor relationship that shaped Rock's early professional trajectory. He joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1990 and stayed through 1993 — three seasons of sketch work that included recurring characters such as Nat X and the I'm Chillin' segments — before leaving for In Living Color and a brief run on HBO's The Chris Rock Show, which won two Emmys for its hosting and writing. The 1996 HBO special Bring the Pain — shot at the Takoma Theatre in Washington, DC — was the inflection point: the 'Niggas vs Black People' bit and the OJ Simpson material made the hour a cultural event, the special won two Emmys, and Rock was suddenly the most-talked-about stand-up working. Bigger & Blacker followed in 1999, Never Scared in 2004, and Kill the Messenger — taped across three cities, in Johannesburg, London, and New York — in 2008. Each was an HBO hour and each won or was nominated for the major comedy Emmys. He hosted the Academy Awards in 2005 and again in 2016 — the second time during the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which he addressed head-on in the opening monologue — and was on the Oscars stage again in 2022 when Will Smith slapped him during a presentation, an event Rock did not address publicly until Selective Outrage one year later. Tamborine, taped at BAM in Brooklyn, dropped on Netflix in 2018 as a more personal and confessional hour about his marriage, divorce, parenting, and infidelity. Selective Outrage broadcast live from the Hippodrome in Baltimore in March 2023 — Netflix's first live event of any kind — and dedicated its closing twenty minutes to the slap. The film catalogue runs from CB4 and Pootie Tang through New Jack City, Lethal Weapon 4, the four Grown Ups and Madagascar features (Marty the zebra), the Sundance-acclaimed Top Five, the directorial work on Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife, the Spiral horror reboot, the Fargo season-four lead role, and producing credits on Down to Earth, Everybody Hates Chris, and the recent Netflix slate. The cumulative ledger is four Primetime Emmy Awards, three Grammys for Best Comedy Album, multiple NAACP Image Awards, and a body of stand-up work that anyone in the touring comedy business treats as a reference text.

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