Christopher Guest

Christopher Guest (born February 5, 1948, New York City, New York, U.S.) is a multitalented American-British actor, writer, producer, director, and musician best known for his satirical faux-documentary-style comedies, including This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Best in Show (2000), and A Mighty Wind (2003).

Early life and education

Guest’s British-born father, Lord Peter Haden-Guest, served as editorial director at the United Nations, and his mother (Lord Haden-Guest’s second wife), American Jean Haden-Guest (née Hindes), worked as a vice president and head of talent at CBS. Christopher Guest grew up in both New York City and the United Kingdom. He attended the prestigious High School of Music & Art (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts) in New York, where he played the clarinet and studied classical music. Next he attended the Stockbridge School, a boarding school in Massachusetts, where he met fellow student Arlo Guthrie. At Stockbridge Guest played in Guthrie’s bluegrass band, learning to play the mandolin on an instrument that had belonged to Guthrie’s father, folk music legend Woody Guthrie. Guest went on to study acting at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, but transferred after a year to New York University (NYU), where he pursued but did not complete an acting degree.

Acting career

In 1969, while studying at NYU, Guest made his New York stage debut in a production of Jules Feiffer’s Little Murders, which was directed by Alan Arkin and featured actor Fred Willard, who later became one of Guest’s essential collaborators. About this time Guest dropped Haden from his stage name, fearing that it sounded like an affectation. In addition to stage work, Guest had small roles in the films The Hospital (1971) and The Hot Rock (1972). After getting his foot in the door at the fledgling National Lampoon magazine by contributing an article, Guest appeared on several comedy albums put out by the Lampoon collective, beginning with Radio Dinner (1972). In 1973 Guest joined Chevy Chase and John Belushi as cast members of National Lampoon’s Lemmings, an Off-Broadway revue that parodied the Woodstock festival. That year he also began contributing to the The National Lampoon Radio Hour as a writer and performer.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Guest acted on television as well as in films, including a role in Million Dollar Infield (1982), in which he and Rob Reiner played buddies on a softball team. Soon after that role Guest and Reiner began conceiving the framework for a film that turned out to be Reiner’s motion picture directorial debut. In the process, they, along with Michael McKean, whom Guest had met at NYU, and Harry Shearer, created the cult comedy classic This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Presented in a faux-documentary style, the film satirizes the rock music industry as it follows Spinal Tap, a fictional self-important, less-than-beloved British heavy metal band, on a tour of the United States. The movie was almost entirely unscripted and improvised, and many of its scenes were shot in just one take. Each of the actors played their own instruments in the film.

As Nigel Tufnel, the Tap’s often befuddled lead guitarist, Guest is at the center of the film’s most iconic scene, in which he explains to documentarian Marty DiBergi (played by Reiner) that the controls on his custom amplifier “all go to 11,” which he believes makes it louder than other amps. While the film did moderately well at the box office, the movie gained cult status with its VHS and subsequent DVD releases. It is often cited as the progenitor of the “mockumentary” genre, a label Guest despises because he feels it suggests a mean-spirited approach that shortchanges the attempts he would make as a director to preserve the dignity of the films’ characters even while humorously revealing their foibles.

Soon after the success of This Is Spinal Tap, Guest joined the cast of Saturday Night Live for the 1984–85 season. In 1986 he made a cameo appearance in Little Shop of Horrors, and the next year he played another iconic role in the beloved adventure comedy The Princess Bride, the sadistic six-fingered Count Rugen.

Filmmaking career

Guest turned his hand to film directing with The Big Picture (1989). Made with a screenplay that he wrote with McKean and Michael Varhol, the movie satirizes the culture of Hollywood filmmaking by following an award-winning film student (Kevin Bacon) as he becomes immersed in that world. Although the film received generally favorable reviews, it was with a string of multilayered, exquisitely detailed comedic faux documentaries in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap that Guest would distinguish himself as a filmmaker, beginning with Waiting for Guffman (1996).

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As would be the case in most of Guest’s subsequent films, the dialogue in Waiting for Guffman was almost entirely improvised by the actors and was based on a carefully structured plot outline and exhaustive character histories that were written over the course of many months by Guest and Eugene Levy, of SCTV fame. By allowing the actors (including himself) to perform scenes at great length to be edited later, Guest enabled the performers to fully inhabit their characters, leading to stunningly nuanced results that are often as insightful or touching as they are funny. This outcome also owed much to the skills of the ensemble of remarkably gifted improvisers Guest assembled, with whom he would continue to work (with additions and subtractions) in his subsequent films. Guest’s informal stock company has included McKean, Shearer, Levy, Bob Balaban, Ed Begley, Jr., Jennifer Coolidge, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, Chris O’Dowd, Catherine O’Hara, Jim Piddock, Parker Posey, and Willard.

Waiting for Guffman focuses on the reactions of the members of a small-town community theater company to a rumor that someone from Broadway will be attending their play about the origin of their quiet Missouri hamlet; Best in Show (2000) comedically explores the milieu of a Westminster Kennel Club-like dog show; A Mighty Wind (2003), once again leveraging the musical skills of Guest, McKean, and Shearer, lovingly spoofs the folk music revival of the 1960s by taking an up-close-and-personal look at the staging of a memorial concert for a folk music impresario; and For Your Consideration (2006) satirizes Hollywood’s Oscar season. In 2013 Guest wrote (with Piddock), directed, and executive produced the HBO series Family Tree, starring O’Dowd as a young man tracking down his genealogy. Guest collaborated with Piddock again on the Netflix production Mascots (2016), which follows a number of fictitious sport teams’ mascots as they prepare for and participate in an international mascot competition. In 2018 Guest shifted gears to direct the film version of singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III’s stage show Surviving Twin, which combines Wainwright’s musical performances with his reminiscences about his father, Life magazine columnist Loudon Wainwright, Jr., and excerpts of his father’s writing.

Personal life

Guest holds a hereditary British peerage. He became the 5th Baron Haden-Guest after his father passed away in 1996. He was an active member of the House of Lords until the passage of the House of Lords Act of 1999, which ended a hereditary peer’s right to pass down membership through family. In 1984 Guest married American actress Jamie Lee Curtis. They have two adopted daughters. He is the brother of actor Nicholas Guest.