Bob Saget

Early life

Saget was born in Philadelphia to a Jewish family. His father, Benjamin (August 28, 1917 – January 30, 2007), was a supermarket executive, and his mother, Rosalyn "Dolly" (February 12, 1925 – February 15, 2014), was a hospital administrator. Saget lived in California before moving back to Philadelphia and graduating from high school. Saget originally intended to become a doctor, but his Honors English teacher, Elaine Zimmerman, saw his creative potential and urged him to seek a career in films.

Saget attended Temple University's film school, where he created Through Adam's Eyes, a black-and-white film about a boy who received reconstructive facial surgery and was honored with an award of merit in the Student Academy Awards. He graduated with a B.A. in 1978. Saget intended to take graduate courses at the University of Southern California but quit a few days later. Saget describes himself at the time in an article by Glenn Esterly in the 1990 Saturday Evening Post: "I was a cocky, overweight twenty-two-year-old. Then I had a gangrenous appendix taken out, almost died, and I got over being cocky or overweight." Saget talked about his burst appendix on Anytime with Bob Kushell, saying that it happened on the Fourth of July, at the UCLA Medical Center and that they at first just iced the area for seven hours before taking it out and finding that it had become gangrenous.

1987–2001

Following a short stint as a member of CBS' The Morning Program in early 1987, Saget was cast as Danny Tanner in Full House, which became a success with family viewers, and landed in the Nielsen ratings' Top 30 beginning with season three. In 1989, Saget began as the host of America's Funniest Home Videos, a role he held until 1997. During the early 1990s, Saget worked both on Full House and AFV simultaneously. In 2009, he returned to AFV for the 20th-anniversary one-hour special co-hosted with Tom Bergeron.

Saget directed the 1996 ABC television movie For Hope, which was inspired by the life story of his sister, Gay Saget, who died from scleroderma three years earlier.

In 1998, Saget directed his first feature film Dirty Work, starring Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange. Coming off one year after he left his long-running role as host of America's Funniest Home Videos, the film received broadly negative reviews from critics and earned low box office returns. However, it has since become a cult favorite, due partially to Artie Lange's later popularity on The Howard Stern Show where the film is sometimes mentioned, often in unflattering terms.

In 1998, Saget made a cameo appearance as a cocaine addict in the stoner comedy Half Baked.

2001–present

Saget had a sitcom on The WB titled Raising Dad. It co-starred Kat Dennings, Brie Larson, and Jerry Adler and lasted only one season.

Saget was host of NBC's game show 1 vs. 100 from 2006 to 2008.

Saget served as the voice of the future Ted Mosby, who narrated the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, which premiered on September 19, 2005.

His HBO comedy special, That Ain't Right, came out on DVD on August 28, 2007. It is dedicated to his father, Ben Saget, who died at age 89 on January 30, 2007, due to complications from congestive heart failure.

From 2005 to 2010, Saget had a recurring role in four episodes of the HBO TV series Entourage playing a parody of himself. He would later appear in the 2015 feature film based on the series.

Saget wrote, directed, and starred in Farce of the Penguins, a parody of 2005's March of the Penguins, which was released direct-to-DVD, in January 2007.

Saget appeared in the Broadway musical The Drowsy Chaperone for a limited four-month engagement. He played "Man in Chair" while Jonathan Crombie, who normally played the character on Broadway, was with the national tour of the musical. On January 4, 2008, Saget's caricature was unveiled at Sardi's Restaurant.

In April 2009, he debuted in a new sitcom along with his co-star Cynthia Stevenson on ABC called Surviving Suburbia. The series, which was originally to air on The CW, ended after one abbreviated season.

In 2010, Saget starred in an A&E series Strange Days in which he follows others in different activities and lifestyles, documenting their adventures in unusual ways.

In 2014, his book Dirty Daddy was released, in which Saget writes about his career, comedy influences, and experiences with life and death. He embarked on a small tour in support of the book, including the Pemberton Music Festival, where he introduced Snoop Dogg prior to performing his own set. In the same year he toured Australia for the first time, with a stand-up show called Bob Saget Live: The Dirty Daddy Tour. The show was performed in the major cities of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth.

In 2015 and 2016, he guest-starred in two episodes of Grandfathered, starring and produced by his Full House co-star, John Stamos.

Charity work

Saget is currently a board member of the Scleroderma Research Foundation. His scleroderma efforts have further benefited such celebrities as Scary Movie star Regina Hall.

In an interview with Ability Magazine, Saget discussed how his sister was diagnosed with scleroderma at 43 and died at 47. Before that, she had been misdiagnosed many times.

"Unfortunately, rheumatologists in a lot of places don’t have very many scleroderma patients come through their labs, and no one knew what to do with her. I wish I’d known then what I know now." Because of this, Saget is involved in fundraising efforts towards finding a cure for the disease, saying, "There’s also a Scleroderma Foundation, and we’re separate from them, but one of the Scleroderma Foundation board heads is also on the Scleroderma Research Foundation board. We're all basically trying to cure the same thing. Our organization has raised $25 million for research. Our chairman, Luke Evnin, is an amazing man, and lives up in San Francisco with his wife, Deann Wright. They’re both brilliant scientists and doctors. Dana Delany’s on the board, Caryn Zucker, Kristen Baker Bellamy, who lost her mother to scleroderma, and is married to Bill Bellamy. Robin Williams worked our first benefit. A number of celebrities sign on, which helps to give the disease a higher profile. As you may know, Regina, a significant number of the people who get scleroderma are African-American."