Artie Lange Biography

Artie Lange was born Arthur Steven Lange Jr., on October 11, 1967, in Livingston, New Jersey, to Judy and Arthur Lange. He grew up with a sister named Stacey. He was raised in a middle-class family with his father working as a contractor for installing television antennas, while his mother was a housewife.

Artie was an active young kid during his teen years. While he was attending the Union High School, he was an avid baseball player, and went on becoming a third baseman. He was so much indulged in the extra-curricular activities that his grades began to suffer in school. He had to take extra classes in summer in order to graduate high school.

By the time he graduated high school, he had somehow realized that he had a knack for comedy. In 1985, he enrolled into the Seton Hall University through a family connection. He began entertaining his fellow students through his presentations in college. He was never into academics and tried devising ways to quit the college.

His father suffered an accident while installing an antenna, and that compelled Artie to move back to his house and help his father in his business, as his father had become quadriplegic. His mother also took a job to make the ends meet.

Money was required for his father’s treatment and Artie thought of a unique way to gather the funds. He wrote to many celebrities to auction their stuff to collect money for his father. Howard Stern, famous American television and radio personality, sent him an autographed jacket. However, in 1990, Artie’s father passed away due to an infection.

After the passing away of his father, Artie Lange decided not to study further and started working. He had discovered that he could do stand-up comedy and at the age of 19, he performed his first act in Manhattan. However, his first ever stand-up show was met with a very cold response. Artie himself admitted that he forgot many of his lines on-stage and that he had gone there unprepared.

For the next few years, he gave up on trying becoming a stand-up comedian and took acting classes from HB Studios in New Jersey. However, he had to quit the acting classes after three weeks, as he was not able to pay for them anymore.

He further became desperate to work and support his family. This led him to work as a longshoreman at Port Newark in 1991 and he worked there until the end of the year, earning $60,000 in one year.

By September 1992, he had saved enough to give stand-up comedy career another shot. While he was searching for stand-up work, he drove taxi to make the ends meet. His first ever paid stand-up gig paid him $30. He was enthused and further worked harder to improve his skills.

He eventually received good response from his stand-up acts that he performed at Stand Up Ny and Comic Strip Live. At the latter, he was hired to perform regular stand-ups from Tuesdays to Saturdays.

His real breakthrough came when he started his own improv-comedy troupe called Live on Tape, which was successful. The success led Artie lANGE to sign a contract with the William Morris Agency, where he met Peter Principato, who served as Artie’s manager for the next 10 years.

The comedy sketch show Mad TV arranged auditions for more than 8000 people from all over the country in the mid-1990s and Artie was chosen as one among the eight cast members that were selected to feature on the show. In May 1995, Artie moved to Los Angeles to shoot the pilot episode, which led the show to be picked up by Fox network.

In 1995, a major roadblock came that threatened to destroy his career before it had even begun properly. He became a cocaine addict and once when he was out of cocaine, he attempted a suicide, also writing a suicide note to his family. However, he was saved on time after he was taken to a hospital. He was later taken to New Jersey for rehabilitation and counselling program and returned to LA in 1996 to shoot the remaining episodes.

His mental health remained troubled and he fell into clinical depression and left Mad TV after two seasons, although he did make guest appearances in a few seasons of the show afterwards.

In 1996, he made his acting debut playing a key role in the independent film titled Puppet, and in 1998, he appeared playing another significant role in the film titled Dirty Work.

The films’ success had him receiving many offers to star in television shows and films. However, none of his ideas really clicked with the executives and he ended up doing stand-up shows around Los Angeles.

In the late 1990s, other than appearing in films, such as The Bachelor, Mystery Men, Lost & Found, he also appeared in the sitcom titled The Norm Show and played one of the lead roles in the sitcom until 2001.

In the early 2000s, he had yet another major career breakthrough when he appeared on The Howard Stern Show, which further catapulted him to great professional heights. In 2004, he released the first DVD of his stand-up comedy special titled It’s the Whiskey Talkin’

In 2005, he secured the funding for the film titled Artie Lange’s Beer League. However, during the making of the film, Artie was going through substance abuse, which reflected in the final film, as the film went on becoming a major critical and commercial debacle.

In 2008, Artie Lange headlined a comedy tour called Operation Mirth, which was formed to perform for the American troops stationed in Afghanistan. Later that year, he signed a deal with Spiegel & Grou to write his first book titled Too Fat to Fish, the story of his life, which became a bestseller.

He truggled through heroin addiction in the late 2000s and cancelled his shoots with The Howard Stern Show and his standup gigs. Over the next couple of years, he faced several troubles to focus on work and the situation further worsened after he went through another suicide attempt.

He somehow resumed his career and hosted The Nick & Artie Show, which eventually became the The Artie Lange Show after Nick left. He also released his second book in 2013, titled Crash and Burn. Over the next few years, he kept facing the substance abuse issues, but kept working intermittently.

Artie Lange dated Dana Cironi from 2002 to 2006. In 2009, he met Adrienne Ockrymiek and the couple got engaged. They broke up in 2014.

Artie does not consider himself a liberal. However, he claims to be pro-gay rights. He has been criticized of being a homophobic when it was found that he constantly used derogatory slurs for gays in his earlier stand-up routines.