Tom Green

Tom Green is also the designer and driver of the land speed record holder, Wingfoot Express.

Michael Thomas (Tom) Green (born July 30, 1971) is a Canadian shock comic.

Born in Pembroke, Ontario, Green grew up in Ottawa and had a radio show on the University of Ottawa's campus radio station, CHUO, before getting his first series on an Ottawa public-access television channel, Rogers Community 22.

In the early 1990s, Green had a short-lived career as a rapper in a band called Organized Rhyme.

The Tom Green Show typically consisted of stunts played by Tom on unsuspecting people. A number of them involved Green's parents, Mary and Richard, who consistently appeared to be unamused and occasionally angered by Tom's antics. Some of Green's most notable skits include humping a dead moose (referenced by rapper Eminem), having an X-rated lesbian scene (named the "Slut Mobile") painted on his father's car, drinking milk by sucking a cow's udder, and putting a cow head in his parents' bed while they slept.

After the show moved to MTV, Tom became famous in the United States. This fame soon netted Tom roles in several Hollywood movies, including Road Trip, Freddy Got Fingered (which he also directed), and Stealing Harvard. Freddy Got Fingered "won" in five categories at the 2001 Golden Raspberry Awards which are given to the worst movies of the year. Green actually appeared at the ceremony to accept his awards. The negative reception of Freddy Got Fingered has since made it difficult for Green to secure starring roles in large productions.

He also wrote a song called "Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)", which he composed during MTV's Spring Break while doing a show on a cruise ship. After airing the music video on his show and appealing to his audience to request it, the song became a instant #1 hit on Total Request Live. He quickly called for the video to be retired because "it's not fair to 98 Degrees." Later he revealed (or possibly joked) that MTV had pressured him to do so.

Tom's increasing fame made it harder for him to ambush people on the streets, leading him to target mostly seniors and non-English speakers. MTV cancelled his TV show in 2000, but he continued to appear on the channel via reruns and other promotional materials. After he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in March of 2000, he made a one-hour special of his ordeal, including graphic footage of his own surgery. The episode (which was the last of the MTV version of The Tom Green Show to be produced) received wide critical acclaim for revealing a vulnerable, human side of an otherwise juvenile television personality. He also starred in and directed a one-hour special called The Tom Green Subway Monkey Hour, where he tormented strangers in Japan.

In July of 2000, Tom Green became engaged to actress Drew Barrymore. Green and Barrymore met after Barrymore, who was a fan of Green's show, asked Green to appear in Charlie's Angels which Barrymore starred and produced.

During the build up to their wedding Green and Barrymore frequently joked with the media about when and where they were going to wed. The most notable incident came on November 18, 2000 when Green hosted Saturday Night Live. During the monologue, Green brought Barrymore on stage and teased the audience about the couple marrying at the end of the episode. Ultimately, the stage was set a wedding before Barrymore got "cold feet." The SNL incident initially left viewers and the media confused about whether the couple had actually planned to marry on live TV, or were simply staging a publicity stunt. Eventually, Green also went on The Tonight Show to toy with the public once again, this time claiming that his bride might be pregnant.

On February 18, 2001, Green and Barrymore's Hollywood home burned down. Their dog Flossie woke them around 3:30 a.m. when she barked and "literally banged on their bedroom door." Firefighters estimated damage at $700,000 in the two-story, 3,500-square-foot home north of Beverly Hills. The incident was soon spoofed on Saturday Night Live with guest host Katie Holmes playing Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon playing Tom Green.

Green and Barrymore married on July 7, 2001, but filed for divorce on December 17, 2001, citing irreconcilable differences. Their divorce became official on October 15, 2002. Some speculate that the marriage failed because Green wished to settle down and begin raising a family while Barrymore still had a high profile film career to maintain and still wanted to go out with her friends and have fun.

According to some tabloid reports Green grew annoyed by Barrymore's increasingly neurotic behavior in private. On October 13, 2001, Drew Barrymore hosted Saturday Night Live and Tom Green appeared in the audience wearing a gas mask. The episode came just a month after the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York City, where SNL is produced. Reportedly, Barrymore was already anxious about flying to New York. When news broke that NBC's Rockefeller Center studios where they were rehearsing had received a package containing anthrax, Barrymore fled the set in tears, vowing not to return.

Green would later claim that, at their wedding, most of Barrymore's show business friends (among them, Adam Sandler, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, Courtney Love, and Molly Shannon) paid no attention to Green's own friends and family since they "weren't famous."

In 2003, Green returned with a nightly talk show on MTV called The New Tom Green Show. Marking a change from his earlier work, he was compared in print to a young Johnny Carson or David Letterman. Nevertheless, it was cancelled by MTV a few months after its premiere due to dwindling ratings.

Tom Green's autobiography, titled Hollywood Causes Cancer (co-written with Allen Rucker), was released on October 12, 2004. He is still acting and is a recurring contributor to The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

External links

• Official Tom Green website (http://www.tomgreen.com/)
• Template:Imdb namede:Tom Green