Who

Former SNL cast member Jimmy Fallon has managed to rocket to pop culture ubiquity and earn one of the most coveted jobs in late-night TV despite being disliked by virtually everyone who has ever had the misfortune to watch him perform.

Backstory

Fallon dropped out of college to pursue acting in Los Angeles, where he trained with the improv group The Groundlings before making his TV debut alongside Michael J. Fox on Spin City in 1998. Six months later, he auditioned for Lorne Michaels and earned a gig on Saturday Night Live where he became known for co-hosting the "Weekend Update" segment with Tina Fey, treating the world to a series of mediocre celebrity impersonations and song parodies, and regularly breaking character to laugh during skits. In 2002, while a regular on the show, Fallon released his first comedy album, The Bathroom Wall, which was wretched even by the standards of SNL comedy albums. He departed the show in 2004 to try his hand at movie acting.

Fallon's movie career didn't get off to a very auspicious start when he starred in the abysmal buddy flick Taxi, which paired him with Queen Latifah. His second film wasn't much of an improvement: Fallon starred as a Red Sox fan opposite Drew Barrymore in the 2005 romantic comedy Fever Pitch, which earned him the perpetual enmity of Red Sox Nation when he and Barrymore disrupted the team's first championship celebration in 86 years to film the climactic make-out scene of the movie. Sensing, perhaps, that it would be wise to move beyond comedy, in 2006 he attempted to establish some Serious Actor bona fides by appearing in the Edie Sedgwick biopic Factory Girl. (Unfortunately for Fallon, the flick was critically panned, lending further credence to the theory that he is box office poison.) He steered yet another movie straight into ignominy with his leading role in the 2007 indie comedy/drama The Year of Getting to Know Us.

Despite his seemingly obvious inability to generate a hit, in May 2008 NBC brass officially appointed him Conan O'Brien's successor on Late Night. Fallon will begin alienating audiences some time in 2009, after Conan moves to California to host The Tonight Show.

On the side

Fallon was an owner of the East Village restaurant/bar/theater Mo' Pitkins, with Phil and Jesse Hartman. The venue was shuttered at the end of 2007.

Personal

Fallon dated Winona Rider during her sticky-finger days in 2001, and has also been linked to actress Parker Posey, Broadway star Idina Menzel, and Imitation of Christ designer Tara Subkoff. In 2007, he married Nancy Juvonen, a movie producer and co-owner of Drew Barrymore's production company, Flower Films, which was culpable for Fever Pitch. They live in a co-op on East 50th Street which Fallon purchased in 2006. Prior to that, he owned a pair of apartments overlooking Gramercy Park.