Greg Proops

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Greg Proops
Greg Proops
Birth name	Gregory Everett Proops
Born	October 3 1959 (1959-10-03) (age 48) Phoenix, Arizona, United States
Official site	http://www.gregproops.com

Gregory Everett Proops (born October 3, 1959) is an American actor and stand-up comedian, who works largely in Europe as a comic and improviser.

1 Early life
2 Improv comedy
3 Film and television
4 Radio
5 Personal life
6 External links

Early life

Born in Phoenix, Arizona and raised in San Carlos, California, a quiet suburb south of San Francisco, Proops studied improvisation and acting at San Francisco State University.

Improv comedy

After graduation, he joined an improv group with Mike McShane, which proved to be his ticket to stardom. Both Proops and McShane impressed producers Dan Patterson and Mark Leveson, who put them on their show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?. He frequently instigated jokes and running gags concerning various idiosyncrasies and differences between British English and American English (eg. "lift" vs. "elevator"), and would frequently banter with the host, Clive Anderson, on these matters (among others). He lived in London for four years when he was doing the show and lists McShane and Colin Mochrie as among his best friends. One of his trademarks is the tendency to issue forth a stream of witty barbs and acidic commentary when something in or about the scene strikes him as ridiculous, usually breaking the fourth wall (such as it exists in improv) in the process and bringing the scene to a temporary halt. These interludes are always played for laughs, however, and are never meant to be taken seriously. In his performances and writings, Proops frequently makes non sequitur references to ocelots.

Film and television

Proops has performed his stand-up act across Britain, Europe and in New Zealand. However, he remains best-known for appearances on Whose Line is it Anyway?, including both the US and UK versions. He reprises this role in 2004’s Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show, a show similar to Whose Line. His other credits include hosting Space Cadets, a mid-1990s science-fiction comedy game show on Channel 4 in the UK, which also featured Craig Charles (Dave Lister from Red Dwarf) and Bill Bailey, and appearances on BBC2’s Mock the Week. He appeared as a panelist on the 2000 revival of To Tell the Truth. Proops also hosted two game shows: VS. in 1999 and Rendez-View in 2001. Currently he helps Joan and Melissa critique people's fashion on the red carpet for the Oscars on the TV Guide channel. Greg can also be heard as the voice of Bob the Builder on the popular children’s series seen on PBS. He is also a panelist on Chelsea Handler's Show In addition to his stand-up and improv acts, Proops has done voice work in various films and TV shows, including the miniseries Stripperella with Pamela Anderson and Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, as well as providing the voice for the Bede side of the two-headed announcer Fode and Beed in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, with Scott Capurro providing the voice for Fode. He provided the voice of Bob in the TV series Bob the Builder for the four seasons of "Project Build-It". His politics are left-wing, while Drew Carey's are more conservative, something they often teased each other about on Whose Line, with Carey once going so far as to call Proops a "commie" on the air. He recently started his own web show, The Greg Proops Experiment, on online humour site Super Deluxe, which constitutes Proops ranting humourously about different topics in current events.

Radio

Proops hosts a bi-weekly radio program, and a nightclub-atmosphere talk show at the Largo in Hollywood, and played the title role in BBC Radio 4's sci-fi comedy series Seymour the Fractal Cat. As of October 2007 he is also a frequent guest within the currently infrequent radio talk-show work of Marc Maron.