Jim Gaffigan is a famous actor, comedian, writer and producer who has enjoyed major success in the entertainment industry.
Gaffigan, well recognized for his career in showbiz, has been in the scene for decades and is considered an accomplished stand-up comedian.
The entertainer has enjoyed a lauded career both in films and television and is still active in the industry, doing what he knows best.
Want to know more? Keep reading and learn personal details about Jim Gaffigan, who is his wife, Jim Gaffigan success, his career, his achievements, Jim Gaffigan net worth and a lot more.
Jim Gaffigan Net worth timeline
Jim Gaffigan net worth timeline begins in 1990, when he moved to New York to start his comedy career. His career began when his friend dared him to take a stand up the seminar.
For the first years of his comedy career, he tried many different comedy styles including ranging, from angry comedy to impressions and voices.
Gaffigan’s stand up comedy on Comedy Central’s series ‘Shorties Watchin’ Shortie’ was featured in 2004. The following year, he filmed a live Comedy Central special.
In 2012, he recorded ‘Mr. Universe’ which was nominated for a Grammy.
He was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the “25 funniest people on Twitter” in 2012.
In 2016, he was the most popular comedian on all of Pandora.com with over 670 million spins.
Between June 2017 and June 2018, Jim Gaffigan earned $18 million from his various endeavors. That was enough to make him one of the 10 highest-paid comedians on the planet at the time.
Jim Gaffigan Net worth 2021
According to online sources, Jim Gaffigan net worth in 2021 is estimated at approximately $30 million.
In recent years Jim has been one of the highest-paid comedians on the planet. In a touring year, his earnings can approach $15-20 million.
Jim Gaffigan Comedy Central deal
Around 2006, Jim scored a huge opportunity and headlined a Comedy Central special called Beyond the Pale. This time it paid dividends, landing him his first theater show a month later.
Jim Gaffigan Netflix deal
Jim has gone on to release multiple specials on Netflix. In 2016, he agreed to partner with Netflix, the industry’s dominant force and home to original specials. Gaffigan’s first original Netflix special ‘Cinco’ aired in 2017, long after the company had reshaped the industry.
Last year he cut loose from the kingmaker and placed a bigger bet on himself, pairing up with Comedy Dynamics, an independent producer, to release his next special everywhere but Netflix.
Jim Gaffigan Comedy Dynamics deal
Comedy Dynamics is an independent company, Jim said about the deal “I was approached by Comedy Dynamics, proposing that the special would be available everywhere people rent or buy. You didn’t just have to have Netflix. And I thought this was appealing, that it’d be available to everyone at the same time.”
Comedy Dynamics bought the rights to his 2018’s Noble Ape, and made it available everywhere Netflix wasn’t. It had a theatrical release and could be purchased and rented on multiple services, including iTunes, YouTube and Walmart’s VUDU.
The up-front payment to Gaffigan from Comedy Dynamics was lower than at Netflix, but the wide distribution allowed him to earn on the back end, bringing in a total of $10 million, according to Forbes estimates.
Jim Gaffigan book deal
Gaffigan is a best-selling published author. His first book, “Dad Is Fat”, was released in 2013, and debuted at No. 5 on The New York Times Best Seller’s list. The title of the book was derived from the first complete sentence his eldest son wrote on a dry-erase board at the age of four or five. “He showed it to me,” Gaffigan recalled in an interview, “and I laughed and then I put him up for adoption.” The book is a collection of essays dealing with the raising of his children, as well as memories from his own childhood.
Gaffigan signed with Crown Publishing in June 2013 to write a second book of comic essays. “Food: A Love Story” was published in 2014.
Jim Gaffigan Amazon deal
Gaffigan released his seventh stand-up special, Quality Time, in 2019 through Amazon.
He said about his deal with Amazon “The reason I went to Amazon is to expand my audience,” “I don’t know what they’re gonna do and I don’t fully understand their marketing might. I might be pleasantly surprised. I mean, it’s a huge corporation. They could probably make more selling socks.”
Jim Gaffigan: Quality Time was Gaffigan’s first comedy special for Amazon. In 2020 he announced that he was returning to Amazon for his second stand-up special, Jim Gaffigan: The Pale Tourist.
The two-part stand-up special was filmed on location in Ontario, Canada and Barcelona, Spain, as part of Gaffigan’s The Pale Tourist worldwide tour in which he traveled the world — in each country meeting people, eating the food, and learning a bit about the history. He would then transform those experiences into a stand-up set of all-new material and perform it for locals and expatriates, before heading on to another destination and doing it all over again.
Jim Gaffigan House
Jim and his family live in Manhattan. Jim Gaffigan lives with his wife and five children in a five-story walk-up apartment on the Bowery on Great Jones Street. The family shares a two-bedroom apartment.
Their living room/home office has a large projection screen, black walls, a black floor, and black leather furniture.
Jim Gaffigan Early life
James Christopher Gaffigan was born on July 7, 1966, in Elgin, Illinois. His parents are Marcia Mitchell, a charity worker and fundraiser, and Michael A. Gaffigan, a banker and the former president and CEO of the Mercantile National Bank of Indiana. He is the youngest of six children, and was raised in Chesterton, Indiana, with all of his siblings. Both of his parents died from cancer; his mother in 1990, and his father in 1999.
During his teenage years, Gaffigan often watched comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live”. His father was the first in the family to attend college, and often encouraged his children to attend college and pursue more “secure” careers. However, Gaffigan knew he wanted to pursue a career in acting as early as age five.
He attended La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana, where he was a member of the football team. He then continued his education at Purdue University, before transferring to Georgetown University after just a year. He graduated from Georgetown in 1988 with a Finance degree.
For a brief time after graduating from college, Gaffigan worked as a litigation consultant. Then, in 1990, he moved to New York to pursue a career in comedy. A big inspiration for him at this time was David Letterman, who is also from Indiana.
Jim Gaffigan Career
In New York, Gaffigan worked a day job in advertising and took nighttime acting classes. Then, after taking a stand-up seminar, he fell in love with stand-up and starting playing at comedy clubs. The first seven years of his career were spent trying out different styles. Eventually, after auditioning multiple times for “The Late Show with David Letterman” over the course of six years, he finally landed the opportunity to perform on the show. His stand-up routine was successful and well-received, and helped him launch his career.
David Letterman was so impressed by Gaffigan’s first appearance on his show that he handpicked him to develop a sitcom for the Letterman-owned production company World Wide Pants. Gaffigan then appeared as a guest star on a list of hit shows including That ’70s Show (1998), Sex and the City (1998), Third Watch (1999), Ed (2000) and Law & Order (1990).
He has released over ten comedy albums, including “Luigi’s Doghouse” “The Last Supper” “Beyond the Pale” “Mr. Universe” and “Noble Ape” -to name just a few. He first made the transition to acting in the 1990s, after his comedy career slowed down.
He turned his attention to auditioning for commercials, which turned out to be a very profitable move. Over the course of his career, he has appeared in over 200 commercials, for everything from Saturn and Chryslers to Rolling Rock and ESPN.
He then made the transition to acting in films and on television. He has appeared in a wide range of films. Some of these films include “13 Going on 30” (2004), “The Love Guru” (2008), “17 Again” (2009), “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” (2010), “Hot Pursuit” (2015), “Chuck” (2016), “Being Frank” (2018), and “Drunk Parents” (2019), to name just a few.
In addition, he starred on the television shows Welcome to New York, The Ellen Show and My Boys.
Furthermore, Gaffigan, has also appeared as a guest on series like “Law & Order”, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”, “Sex and the City”, “That ’70s Show”, “Flight of the Conchords”, and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”, among others.
Jim Gaffigan Success and Achievements
Gaffigan is one of only ten comedians in history to sell out the famed Madison Square Garden arena and he opened for Pope Francis in front of one million+ people in Philadelphia, during the Pope’s visit to the U.S. in 2016.
He was recently named one of the world’s highest grossing comedians by Forbes, and streaming site Pandora announced Gaffigan as their most popular comic with over 1 billion spins to date.
Jim Gaffigan Ventures
In addition to his career as a comedian and actor, Gaffigan is known for his voice-over work. From 2005 to 2008, he voiced an animated version of himself on “Pale Force” alongside Conan O’Brien.
He also produced the series, which was nominated for a Daytime Emmy in 2007 for Outstanding Broadband Program – Comedy. Other shows he has voiced characters on include “Bob’s Burgers”, “Shorty McShorts’ Shorts”, “Wordgirl”, “Star vs. the Forces of Evil”, and the animated film “Duck Duck Goose”.
He also starred on his own show, “The Jim Gaffigan Show” from 2015 until 2016.
As an actor, Gaffigan had eight films opening in 2019, three of which premiered the Sundance International Film Festival. He returned to the festival in 2020 with Tesla, opposite Ethan Hawke. Most recently, Gaffigan co-starred with Allison Janney and Viola Davis in Amazon Studios’ Troop Zero. He also co-starred in Them That Follow (Olivia Coleman, Walton Goggins) and Light From Light (Marin Ireland). Gaffigan debuted in his first leading role with the comedy Being Frank, and made waves among critics in American Dreamer, his first leading role in a drama/thriller.
In between films, Gaffigan toured the world performing in locations such as Greece, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Mexico City, and more.
Jim Gaffigan Charity
Jim is known to be a supporter of the following charities: Bob Woodruff Foundation, Food Bank For New York City and Scleroderma Research Foundation.
He and his wife also started a fundraising effort to deliver food to hospitals across New York City’s five boroughs through their nonprofit organization, The Imagine Society.
Jim Gaffigan Wife
Gaffigan married actress Jeannie Gaffigan, in July 2003.
Jeannie who was born Jeannie Noth; is a frequent collaborator with Gaffigan, and helps him write and work on much of his material. She is a credited writer and/or producer on many of his comedy works, his two books, and also his television show.
She was diagnosed two years ago with brain cancer. She wrote about what she went through in her book released this month, When Life Gives You Pears. The tumor found on her brain stem was the size of a pear, thus the book title. Eventually, the Gaffigans were told that Jeannie’s tumor was operable.
Jim Gaffigan Children
Jim and his longtime wife, are the proud parents of five kids. The comedian, 54, and his wife share five kids together: Marre, Jack, Katie, Michael and Patrick.
Jim has widely credited his wife for her parenting skills, telling outlets she is “much better at parenting than I am.”
Lessons learned from Jim Gaffigan
Among the notable lessons we can learn from Jim Gaffigan include, laughter is definitely therapeutic.
When his wife, Jeannie had to start going for MRIs and other tests, she encouraged her husband to work some of that “material” into his stand-up act.
Jim said about the experience:
“It is…kind of what we do. Whether it’s working on the show or my stand-up or writing our book, it’s our defense mechanism. It’s therapeutic, but it’s also weird, because I immediately came up with some tumor jokes and was running them by her.”
“There are certain things where I think a lot of people would be like, “That’s way too soon,” but look, Jeannie went in for this two-hour MRI, and she came out and the first thing she said was, ‘Write down these ideas.’ So I suppose it’s therapeutic in a way.”
Jim Gaffigan Favorite quotes
“Thanksgiving. It’s like we didn’t even try to come up with a tradition. The tradition is, we overeat. ‘Hey, how about at Thanksgiving we just eat a lot?’ ‘But we do that every day!’ ‘Oh. What if we eat a lot with people that annoy the hell out of us?’”
“In the end, the type of parent you are is going to be something that you carry with you. … Having multiple kids, it’s been a gift in a way. It’s keeping the priorities straighter.”
“Whatever a writer gets paid for his book, it’s never enough. I think that’s true. It’s hard work. But in the end, you wrote a book. It’s something real and tangible that sits on a shelf forever.”
What does Jim Gaffigan do now?
Jim Gaffigan is continuously working on new and innovative projects, and keeps his fans up to date throughout his different media channels. In 2021, he is scheduled to go on tour this upcoming August.
Jim Gaffigan is active on most popular social media platforms including:
Jim Gaffigan Instagram
Jim Gaffigan is active on Instagram where he has over 800k followers.
Jim Gaffigan Twitter
Jim Gaffigan is active on Twitter where he has 3.2 million followers.
Jim Gaffigan Facebook
Jim Gaffigan can also be found on Facebook with 1.3 million followers.
Jim Gaffigan YouTube
Jim Gaffigan has his own YouTube channel. He currently has 619K subscribers.
Jim Gaffigan Website
You can also check out Jim Gaffigan on his website for more info.
