As one of several comedic actors who generated considerable buzz as a correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 1999- ), Ed Helms managed to parlay his popularity into a successful career in features and on television. After having gotten his start in stand-up and doing commercial voiceovers, Helms scored his breakthrough when he joined The Daily Show cast in 2002, playing a brash, sarcastic and sometimes silly caricature that gained him certain notoriety for several hilarious and outlandish segments that lived on as some of the shows finest moments. At the height of his popularity, Helms followed fellow Daily Show alum Steven Carell and Stephen Colbert out the door in pursuit of greater success. He immediately landed on one of the hottest sitcoms of the moment, The Office (NBC, 2005- ), which allowed him to display his chops as an ill-tempered Dunder-Mifflin employee who undergoes anger management and becomes a socially awkward softy prone to breaking out into song. With The Hangover (2009), a surprise summer blockbuster, Helms proved that he was able to translate his comedic skills to the big screen, promising fans that better things were still to come.
Born on Jan. 24, 1974, Helms was raised in Atlanta, GA. Early on in life, Helms knew that he wanted to go into comedy, but wisely kept this information from his parents. He was active in performing arts in high school, appearing in plays, playing guitar with local bands and even studying at Interlochen music camp in Michigan. After graduating Westminster High School, he found creatively stimulating environs at the liberal arts mecca Oberlin College in Ohio. The budding comic performed improv and wrote for the schools comedy magazine, leaving his geology major behind in favor of a film degree. A self-admitted nerd, Helms also took a large concentration of computer science classes, which helped him land on his feet when he moved to New York City after graduation to pursue a career in comedy. His educational background proved to be a perfect fit for the blossoming field of digital video editing, with Helms finding steady work doing technical support for Avid systems. His evenings were spent in the comedy trenches of open mic nights at brick wall stand-up clubs, performing improv and sketch comedy at black box theaters like the infamous Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.
Helms transitioned from tech support work to a fulltime job as a video editor, which put him in the right place at the right time to segue into doing voiceovers for commercials, which proved to be a lucrative gig. When he made the decision to quit his day job and go full-throttle with a performing career, there were plenty of voiceover jobs for clients like Doritos and Burger King to pay the rent. In the spring of 2002, Helms along with friend Rob Corddry and about 300 other comedians and actors auditioned for a handful of correspondent slots on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Helms was a big fan of the show, as well as a news junkie. So he was undoubtedly thrilled when he was included among the five finalists, all of whom knew each other from crossing paths on the comedy circuit. Over the next few months, Helms was given a few segments on the show, with producers enjoying his performance enough to offer him a slot as a regular cast member. Routinely displaying sarcasm and smarminess, Helms set himself apart from his Daily Show cohorts by positioning himself as blissfully unaware, hilariously na
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