Jimmy Fallon has a knack for making people laugh.
It all started on SNL (he was the king of breaking) and has since continued on with The Tonight Show .
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But there is a lot we don’t know about this funnyman, including how he got started in comedy. Are you curious to learn more about him? Check out these 10+ random facts.
1. His big break was through a voice impression contest:
It was his mother who encouraged him to audition, he told USA Today.
“My mom said, ‘Jimmy, you should do this, because you do all of these voices in your bedroom, and I can hear you!’ And I’m like … ‘What else can you hear? Because this is creepy.’
He ended up winning the contest by doing impressions of John Travolta and Seinfeld.
“I won a lot of money — I want to say, like, $500. So for two minutes of work — and I had been working since I was 13 — that was so much money. I freaked out and said, “This is my future! This is it!”
2. He spent his teenage years doing different comedy gigs:
With the taste of fame still on his tongue, he would enter talent shows and working at a comedy club.
On weekends, he would polish up his stand-up skills by adding new voices and music.
3. He dropped out of college to pursue comedy:
This happened when he was just 15 credits shy of graduating.
He ended up moving to L.A. where he lived on his friend’s couch for three months. He took improv classes at The Groundlings and tried his hardest to get onto Saturday Night Live .
4. He bombed his first *Saturday Night Live* audition:
When the show came to check him out in New York City, he was so nervous that he bombed the audition.
Saturday Night Live told him, “Don’t worry about it,” but they ended up hiring Tracy Morgan instead.
5. He was given a second chance to audition for *Saturday Night Live*:
A year after his failed audition, the show called him back and asked for a new audition.
He ended up doing several impressions, including one of Adam Sandler, who had just left the show.
People had told him that Lorne Michaels, the creator of *Saturday Night Live* never laughed.
But when Fallon did the Adam Sandler impression, Lorne put his head in his hands and laughed.
To this, Fallon thought, “wow!” He booked the job a little while after this and worked on the show for seven seasons.
6. His mentor is Lorne Michaels:
Lorne is even a producer on The Tonight Show .
“I was 23 when I got Saturday Night Live and I’m 43 now, so we’ve been friends for 20 years,” he told USA Today .
7. He met his wife, Nancy Juvonen, thanks to Drew Barrymore:
He may have missed his shot with Nicole Kidman, but he did find true love thanks to Barrymore who was a mutual friend between the two.
So it all worked out in the end, really.
8. He has two kids:
Both children, Winnie Rose, six, and Frances Cole, five, were both via surrogate.
“My wife and I had been trying a while to have a baby. We tried a bunch of things—so we had a surrogate,” he said on the Today show.
He’s so happy being a father.
“But being a father is the most exciting, amazing thing that ever happened to me,” Fallon told People after the birth of his second child.
“And everything’s going well on the show. My life has never been this cool.”
9. He was once told that he was “too nice” for Hollywood:
Thankfully, he never listened to the naysayers.
“For me, it’s always been do your work, work as hard as you can, and try to make everything the best you can do.” he said to Men’s Health .
10. He loves golf:
He told Golf Digest that it’s his meditation.
“I have a brain that’s always thinking of a thousand ideas at a time. But when I’m on a golf course, it’s quiet and I’m not really that talkative.”
He even once beat Tiger Woods at his own Wii golf game in Times Square.
“That dude does not like to lose or be told what to do,” he said in an interview with Golf Digest .
11. He’s learning how to play the piano:
We already know he can sing thanks to his many singing segments on his show. But the piano is new to him.
He told USA Today that he uses a program on his computer called Playground and a tiny little keyboard that fits on my desk.
12. He has written a children’s book:
It’s called Your Baby’s First Word Will Be Dada and it’s an adorable series about daddy animals trying to get their babies to say “dada” as their first word.
He told NPR that he was inspired by his own parenting efforts.
“I would try to trick her into saying, ‘dada.’ I would call everything in the house ‘dada,'” he said.
“Like her bottle — I would go, ‘Dada time!’ You know, like, ‘Do you want another dada?’ … I really just want her to say dada.”
13. He never dreamed of hosting *The Tonight Show*:
That’s because it didn’t seem like an actual job that you could have.
“All you remember is you watched Johnny Carson, and you never thought he would retire,” he told Men’s Health .
“I didn’t even know what that word was. I thought he would live forever. So there was no possible way for that to be a dream of mine,” he continued.
Instead, his dream was to grow up and get a job at IBM, like his dad.
