Darrell Hammond

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Nationality USA
Birth 8 october 1955 (68 years) at Melbourne (USA)

Darrell Clayton Hammond (born October 8, 1955) is an American actor, stand-up comedian and impressionist. He was a regular member of "The Not Ready For Prime Time Players Company" on Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2009, the longest tenure of any cast member in the show's history.

Upon his departure, Hammond, at age 53, was also the oldest cast member in the show's history. Hammond made more SNL appearances than any other cast member and impersonated more than 107 celebrities, with Bill Clinton as his most frequent impression.

Hammond held the record for most impersonations by an SNL cast member with 107, until he was surpassed by Kenan Thompson on May 3, 2014. As of December 10, 2011, he had appeared on the show eight times since leaving the cast.

On September 19, 2014, Hammond was announced as the new announcer of SNL, replacing Don Pardo, who had died the month before. In May 2015, he began portraying Colonel Sanders in television commercials for Kentucky Fried Chicken, although he was replaced by Norm Macdonald, also a former SNL cast member, just three months later.

Biography

Hammond married his wife, Elizabeth, on May 9, 1990. The couple divorced in the early 1990s and remarried in 1997 and divorced in 2012. During a February 7, 2012 appearance on the Imus in the Morning radio program, Hammond revealed that the couple is in the process of divorcing. Hammond was seen with another woman several times in May and June 2011, prompting speculation about their marriage which ended.

Hammond has admitted to struggling with alcoholism and cocaine abuse. The death of a close friend in 1991 led to a relapse of drug and alcohol abuse. After suffering another relapse in 2009, Hammond went to rehab.

In August 2011, Hammond filed a lawsuit against Jose Mendez and Dona Monteleone after a car accident in which he was the passenger. Monteleone, who was driving Hammond's vehicle at the time of the accident, is a Manhattan real estate agent.

During an October 2011 interview with CNN, Hammond revealed that his mother had brutally abused him during his childhood. This trauma from abuse led to cutting, several hospitalizations due to psychiatric issues, and diagnoses which include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder.

Hammond says that he was medicated throughout his tenure on Saturday Night Live, and that he cut himself backstage and was once taken from the studio to a psychiatric ward.

On November 8, 2011, Hammond's memoir, which he titled God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked, was published by Harper Collins. It is a first-hand account of his abusive childhood, psychiatric issues, struggles with substance abuse, and experiences on Saturday Night Live.

Entrapment incident
In the late 1980s, Hammond worked briefly as a stand-up comedian on Premier Cruise Line ships.

One evening, while the ship was docked in the Bahamas, Hammond visited a restaurant, where he consumed the equivalent of 16 shots of rum. He claimed that a man repeatedly pestered him throughout the evening to take a dollar bill with trace amounts of cocaine on it. When the comedian left the bar to use the restroom, the man followed him into the stall and told him, "I think you should take this with you." Believing he was about to be mugged, he relented, and the man placed the bill inside Hammond's pocket. Local police were waiting outside the restroom and quickly arrested him. The United States Drug Enforcement Administration later told Hammond that the episode had been a setup, and that local authorities regularly entrapped American tourists; he spent a weekend in a crude jail cell. Hammond was released after his father traveled to the Bahamas and paid $5,000 for his son's release.

Hammond first publicly mentioned the incident while acting as a guest on a 1997 episode of the radio show Loveline; the story was again mentioned when he returned to Loveline in 2000 and 2004, as well as during an appearance on the Opie & Anthony show in 2012. Tina Fey and Tim Meadows, two friends and coworkers of Hammond's, said in 2004 they had not previously heard the story.