Lorne Michaels

Did You Know?

• Michaels was born Lorne David Lipowitz to a Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario.
• A rumour that he was born on a kibbutz in Palestine originated from a comedic Vanity Fair article by Paul Simon.
• He graduated from University College at the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1966.

Career

Michaels began his career as a writer and broadcaster for CBC Radio, working with partner Hart Pomerantz. In 1968, he and Pomerantz moved from Toronto to Los Angeles to write for Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show; that same year, they released a comedy LP titled The Comedy of Hart & Lorne. Around age 23, comedian Frank Shuster and his wife—parents of Michaels's then-wife, Rosie Shuster—recommended he discard his typically Jewish surname to aid his success.

He settled on the Anglo-sounding name Michaels, possibly in homage to director Mike Nichols, and Pomerantz, also a lawyer, helped make the change legal. The duo returned to Canada to star in The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour, a series of CBC comedy specials in the early 1970s. Michaels returned to the United States in 1973 to write for The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour, which brought him to the attention of Lily Tomlin; she hired him to produce a series of specials, the first winning an Emmy.

He credits that work with giving him the credibility NBC needed to hire him to create Saturday Night Live. In 1975, Michaels created (with NBC employee Dick Ebersol and network president Herb Schlosser) the show NBC's Saturday Night, renamed Saturday Night Live in 1977 after an ABC show with the same name was cancelled. The live show gained a reputation as cutting-edge and unpredictable, launching many successful comedians. Michaels was originally producer, later executive producer, and occasionally appears on-screen with deadpan humor. He has been with SNL for all seasons except a hiatus during seasons 6 through 10.

Personal life

Michaels has been married three times. He began a relationship with Rosie Shuster in the early 1960s; they married in 1967 and divorced in 1980. He married model Susan Forristal in 1981, divorcing in 1987. He married his former assistant, Alice Barry, in 1991; they have three children. He became an American citizen in 1987 and was inducted into the Order of Canada in 2002. In January 2025, he donated archival materials to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, to become available for research in January 2026.

In popular culture

Lorne Michaels has been the inspiration for several fictional characters. In the film Brain Candy, Mark McKinney's character Don Roritor was based on his own impression of Michaels. Mike Myers, a former SNL cast member, created Dr. Evil for the Austin Powers series, modeling the villain's speech and gestures after Dana Carvey's impersonation of Michaels. Tina Fey has said that Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock, played by Alec Baldwin, was inspired by Michaels, and Baldwin has also credited Michaels as a source for the character. The 2024 movie Saturday Night features Gabriel LaBelle portraying Michaels in a dramatization of the lead-up to SNL's first episode. That same year, Maria Bamford voiced a depiction of Michaels in the film The People's Joker.

Honors

In 1999, Michaels earned spots in the Television Hall of Fame and on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, plus an honorary degree from Ryerson University. Canada’s Walk of Fame added his star in 2003. The Kennedy Center gave him the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2004; Dan Aykroyd, an original SNL cast member, called the show the country’s main satirical voice. Canada’s highest performing arts honor, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, came in 2006.

He won the Webby for Film & Video Lifetime Achievement in 2008, using his five-word acceptance speech to say “Five words is not enough.” A rare Personal Peabody Award arrived in 2012, accepted at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. The Kennedy Center Honors included him in December 2021, alongside Justino Diaz, Berry Gordy, Bette Midler, and Joni Mitchell. In 2022, he received a Peabody Award for executive producing the Spanish-language comedy Los Espookys and was nominated for another for Documentary Now!.