Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart is considered one of America's top social and comedic voices. From his anchor chair of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he "has breathed new life into a show that hadn't even seemed to need it," said The New York Times. Since taking over as the anchorman of The Daily Show, his presence has seen higher ratings and awareness for himself and Comedy Central.

During the 2000 election year, Stewart and The Daily Show lead the way to the White House as the torch bearers of Comedy Central's Indecision 2000 election coverage that covered the elections, debates and candidates from the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary straight through to the National Conventions and culminated on election night with a one-hour special.

Prior to taking over The Daily Show, Stewart's television work was on HBO's critically acclaimed series-within-a-series, The Larry Sanders Show, playing a character he should know very well: himself. The final season saw, among other things, Stewart seemingly being groomed to take over the fictitious late-night throne from the perpetually paranoid Larry Sanders. Stewart also served as a creative consultant on the series.

On the feature film front, Stewart starred with Adam Sandler in the hit film Big Daddy. He also starred in the romantic drama Playing by Heart, which marked a departure for him in that he was allowed to show more of a dramatic side of himself than people are accustomed to seeing. Stewart also starred in The Faculty, a horror-comedy directed by Robert Rodriguez.

While it may be the conventional route for stand-up comedians to sign a book deal and expound on their early days inside dingy comedy clubs, Stewart took the path less traveled with his debut book, Naked Pictures of Famous People. A collection of fictitious and humorous what-if essays, Naked Pictures has appeared on many bestseller lists including The New York Times. He also wrote The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction.

His popularity continued to grow as he became increasingly comfortable in his role on The Daily Show, where Stewart would take home Emmy Awards for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series in both 2003 and 2004, and Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program in 2004. maintained his dominance at the 2005 Emmy Awards, winning statues for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series and Outstanding Writing for the same category.