Craig Ferguson (born 17 May 1962) is a Scottish-American actor, comedian, writer and television host. He is best known for having hosted the CBS late-night talk show The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), in which he won a Peabody Awardfor his interview with South African archbishop Desmond Tutu in 2009.
After leaving The Late Late Show in December 2014, he hosted the syndicated game show Celebrity Name Game (2014–2017), for which he won two Daytime Emmy Awards, and Join or Die with Craig Ferguson (2016) on History. In 2017, he released a six-episode web show with his wife, Megan Wallace Cunningham, titled Couple Thinkers. In 2021, he hosted The Hustler, a television game show that aired on ABC from 4 January to 23 September 2021. In August 2023, Ferguson began broadcasting his own podcast Joy on iHeartMedia.
After starting his career in the United Kingdom with music, comedy, and theatre, Ferguson moved to the United States, where he appeared in the role of Nigel Wick on the ABC sitcom The Drew Carey Show (1996–2004). Ferguson has written three books: Between the Bridge and the River, a novel; American on Purpose (2009), a memoir; and Riding the Elephant: A Memoir of Altercations, Humiliations, Hallucinations & Observations (2019). He holds both British and American citizenship.
He has written and starred in three films, directing one of them, and has appeared in several others. In animated film, Ferguson voiced Gobber in the How to Train Your Dragon film series (2010–2019), Owl in Winnie the Pooh (2011), and Lord Macintosh in Brave (2012).
Early life and education
Ferguson was born on 17 May 1962 in Stobhill Hospital in the Springburn district of Glasgow, to Robert (1930–2006), a post office worker and Scottish Nationalist, and Janet (nee Ingram) Ferguson (1933–2008), a primary school teacher. When he was six months old, he and his family moved from their Springburn flat to a Development Corporation house in the nearby New Town of Cumbernauld, where he grew up “chubby and bullied”.They lived there as Cumbernauld was rehousing many Glaswegians away from the poor housing conditions and damage to the city from World War II.
Ferguson attended Muirfield Primary School and Cumbernauld High School. At age 16, Ferguson left high school and began an apprenticeship to be an electronics technician at a local factory of American company Burroughs Corporation. Ferguson has two sisters (one older and one younger) and one older brother. His younger sister, Lynn Ferguson Tweddle, is also a comedian, presenter and actress, who voiced Mac in the 2000 stop-motion animation film Chicken Run. She was a writer on The Late Late Show until July 2011.
His first visit to the United States was in 1975, when he was 13, to visit an uncle who lived on Long Island, near New York City. When he moved to New York City in 1983, he worked in construction in Harlem. He was later a bouncer at the nightclub Save the Robots before returning to the United Kingdom
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