Kumail Nanjiani
Biography
Life Story
Kumail Nanjiani was born on February 21, 1978 in Karachi, Pakistan. He is an actor and producer, known for The Big Sick (2017), Life as We Know It (2010) and Stuber (2019). He has been married to Emily V. Gordon since July 14, 2007.
Family
Trivia
Is a huge fan of Hugh Grant. He decided to start a stand-up career after being impressed by Grant's performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).
He moved to the U.S. when he was 18, attending and graduating from Grinnell College in Iowa.
Graduated from Grinnell College with a double major in Computer Science and Philosophy.
Merited a place in TIME magazine's "The 100 Most Influential People" (Pioneers) with an homage penned by Judd Apatow [April 2018].
Personal Quotes
I stay home. It's the best place to be alone. There is hardly any walk-through traffic.
I love, love, love the street-cart food. Gyros are like a meat-flavored fruit roll-up. A meat roll-up.
Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.
You can get stuck in the trap of reading your YouTube comments all the time. Sometimes I regret it. Not everyone is going to love you. And for some reason, stand-up has this thing where everyone thinks they can do it. So everyone thinks they're an expert.
I never really got into game shows. The easiest one is 'Wheel Of Fortune' because you just have to know words, and for the most part everyone knows words.
If you do a sketch, that's a very short narrative. Stand-up, it's bit-to-bit, minute-long narratives.
I think, you know, a lot of the business of comedy is taking your personal experiences and making them relatable to other people.
You really need to have that discipline. It's not even discipline. I just put down these rules. It's not like a vague, 'Motivate yourself!' and do something. It's specific hours set aside every day for certain things.
I would say I try to make my comedy really personal. I try to tell stories that happened to me, experiences from my life.
I moved to New York first and was really apprehensive about moving to L.A., but I really, really like it.
The worst job I ever had was an office job that I had for six years, and that's nothing against the people who I was surrounded by, because they were wonderful people.
