Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (/məkˈfɑːrlɪn/; born October 26, 1973) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, comedian, and singer. MacFarlane is the creator and star of the television series Family Guy (since 1999) and The Orville (since 2017), and co-creator of the television series American Dad! (since 2005) and The Cleveland Show (2009–2013). He also wrote, directed, and starred in the films Ted (2012), its sequel Ted 2 (2015), and A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014).
MacFarlane is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied animation. Recruited to Hollywood, he was an animator and writer for Hanna-Barbera for television series including Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Dexter's Laboratory, and the animated short Larry & Steve for What A Cartoon!. MacFarlane made guest appearances as an actor on television series such as Gilmore Girls, The War at Home, Star Trek: Enterprise, and FlashForward. In 2008, he created the YouTube series Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. He won several awards for his work on Family Guy, including five Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2009, he won the Webby Award for Film & Video Person of the Year.
MacFarlane has performed as a singer at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Royal Albert Hall in London. He has released seven studio albums, in the vein of Frank Sinatra, with influences from jazz orchestrations, and Hollywood musicals beginning with Music Is Better Than Words in 2011. MacFarlane has received five Grammy Award nominations for his work. He has frequently collaborated with artists such as Sara Bareilles, Norah Jones, and Elizabeth Gillies on his albums. MacFarlane has also sung with Gwen Stefani, Meghan Trainor, Ariana Grande, and Barbra Streisand. He hosted the 85th Academy Awards in 2013 and was nominated for Best Original Song for "Everybody Needs a Best Friend" from Ted.
MacFarlane was executive producer of the Neil deGrasse Tyson-hosted Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, an update of the 1980s Cosmos series hosted by Carl Sagan. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2019 and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 2020.
Early life and education
MacFarlane was born and raised in Kent, Connecticut. His parents, Ronald Milton MacFarlane and Ann Perry (née Sager), were born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. His younger sister Rachael is also a voice actress. He has roots in New England going back to the 1600s, and is a descendant of Mayflower passenger William Brewster. His maternal grandfather, Arthur Sager, competed in the 1928 Summer Olympics. MacFarlane's parents met in 1970 when they lived and worked in Boston, Massachusetts, and married later that year. They moved to Kent in 1972, where Ann began working in the admissions office at South Kent School. She later worked in the college guidance and admissions offices at the Kent School, a selective college preparatory school, where Ronald was a teacher.
As a child, MacFarlane developed an interest in illustration, and at the age of two he began drawing cartoon characters such as Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker. By age five, he knew he wanted to pursue a career in animation, and began by creating flip books after his parents found a book on the subject for him. Four years later, at nine, he began publishing a weekly comic strip, Walter Crouton, for The Kent Good Times Dispatch, the local newspaper; it paid him five dollars per week. MacFarlane said in an October 2011 interview that as a child he was always "weirdly fascinated by the Communion ceremony". He created a strip with a character kneeling at the altar taking Communion and asking "Can I have fries with that?" The paper printed it and he got an "angry letter" from the local priest; it led to "sort of a little mini-controversy" in the town.
MacFarlane received his high school diploma in 1991 from the Kent School. While there, he continued experimenting with animation, and his parents gave him an 8 mm camera. He went on to study film, video, and animation at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. As a student, he intended to work for Disney but changed his mind after graduating.
At RISD, MacFarlane created a series of independent films, meeting future Family Guy cast member Mike Henry, whose brother Patrick was MacFarlane's classmate. During his time at RISD, he performed stand-up comedy. In his senior year, he made a thesis film, The Life of Larry, which became the inspiration for Family Guy. A professor submitted his film to the animation studio Hanna-Barbera, where he was later hired.
