 |  | | Full Name: | Dane Jeffrey Cook | | | Birthday: | 3/18/1972 | | | Sign: | Pisces | | | Eye Color: | Brown Height: 6' | | | Hometown: | Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts – grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts. | | | | | Relationship Status: | Dane’s live-in girlfriend for the past two years is Valli Girls singer Rachel Houghton. He has denied persistent rumors of a romance with “Employee of the Month” co-star Jessica Simpson, with whom he maintains a close friendship. | | | Big Break: | Dane’s comedy album “Retaliation” (released in March 2005) went platinum within six months and became the highest-selling comedy album in 28 years, since Steve Martin’s “A Wild and Crazy Guy.” Dana’s follow-up comedy tour included three sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden’s Nokia Theater, and led to an invitation to perform a short comedy routine on MTV’s Music Video Awards later that year. Dane was subsequently invited to host his own HBO Comedy Special, “Vicious Circle,” which was the first of several projects for that network. | | | Best Known For: | Dane is best known for his comedy routines, consisting primarily of observational humor and body language. Dane is hyperactive onstage. He has been known to wriggle all over the floor portraying a snake or an accident victim. Dane claims that his primary influences were great TV comedians such as Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Johnny Carson and Bill Cosby. | | | Cool Facts: | After his performances, Dane enjoys hanging out with his fans until the last person goes home. Then he rushes to his computer, where he answers e-mails and chats with his computer pen pals until the morning comes.
Dane’s stand-up special is the #1 video download on iTunes.
Dane’s nine-minute opening monologue on his first “Saturday Night Live” was the longest in the show’s history. | | | Quick Bio: | Dane is one of seven children (one brother, five sisters) from an Irish-Italian Catholic family. Both his parents were over 40 when he was born. Dane attended Arlington High School in a Boston-area suburb. While attending high school, Dane worked at Video Horizons and Burger King. Dane discovered his talent for comedy when his father gave him a tape recorder. He used to entertain the family with routines taken from his favorite TV comics. Seeing Martin Short on “Saturday Night Live” as a seventh grader made Dane realize that his lifetime dream was to appear on that stage, a dream he would realize years later, when his first appearance as a guest host was one of the highest-rated episodes of the 2005-2006 season. Dane made his stand-up debut in 1990, and was performing stand-up comedy every night by 1995. 1995 also saw Dane’s television debut in a Marie Osmond/Betty White vehicle called “Maybe This Time,” which lasted five episodes. When Dane was in Los Angeles, he was a regular at “The Laugh Factory.” In 1998, Dane was featured on two comedy showcase programs on Comedy Central. He made his feature film debut in a film called “Mystery Men” (1999). His character, “the Waffler,” catches bad guys using a waffle iron and “truth syrup.” In 2001, Dance launched danecook.com to further his career. A few years later, he was one of the first entertainers to use MySpace to attract and update a growing legion of fans. He now has over 2 million “friends” on the site! In 2002 and 2003, Dane played the voices of puppets on “Crank Yankers,” a Comedy Central show that featured re-enactments of prank phone calls. Dane’s first comedy album, “Harmful If Swallowed,” was released in 2003. Dane’s huge success with his second album in 2005 made him a favorite guest on network talk shows, where his delightful pranks make him an audience favorite. He has recently performed to great acclaim before crowds of thousands in Las Vegas, Chicago and other U.S. cities. In 2006, he starred with Jessica Simpson in “Employee of the Month,” and he will soon be co-starring in the film “Good Luck Chuck” with Jessica Alba. | | | Other Notes: | Want to have some fun with Dane? Check out his word search puzzle! | | | |
