Peele, Jordan (1979-….), is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. In 2018, he became the first African American to win the Academy Award for best original screenplay, for the motion picture Get Out (2017). The film won praise for its use of menace and tension to call forth the fear and danger that blacks often feel in white society. Peele also has worked in live comedy theater and television.
Jordan Haworth Peele was born on Feb. 21, 1979, in New York City, New York. He briefly studied puppeteering at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Peele dropped out of college to pursue a career in improv (improvisational) comedy. In improv comedy, performers create their material on the spot. In 1999, Peele moved to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to join the improv-comedy troupe Boom Chicago. In 2002, Boom Chicago performed a touring show at the Second City comedy theater in Chicago, Illinois. There, Peele met the American actor Keegan-Michael Key, who also was performing at Second City. Key later became Peele’s regular writing and acting partner.
In 2003, Peele began working as a writer and performer on the sketch-comedy television series MADtv, which originally aired from 1995 to 2009. Sketch comedy consists of short comic scenes. Key also joined the show and routinely worked with Peele. The song “Sad Fitty Cent,” written by Peele, earned MADtv a 2008 Emmy Award nomination. In 2012, Peele founded Monkeypaw Productions, a company focused on producing movie and TV projects created by underrepresented artists. From 2012 to 2015, Peele and Key wrote and starred in the sketch-comedy series “Key & Peele,” co-produced by Monkeypaw. The series won two Emmy Awards. Both Key and Peele are of mixed white and black descent. Their comedy sketches became noted for intelligent, often playful, commentary on issues of race.
Peele has written, directed, and acted in several motion pictures. For example, he co-wrote and starred in the action comedy Keanu (2016) with Key. Peele directed as well as wrote Get Out and Us (2019). Peele has voiced many animated characters in movies and on TV. For example, he provided the voice of Melvin in the movie Captain Underpants (2017), based on the humorous series of the same name written by Dav Pilkey .
