Seth MacFarlane (born October 26, 1973, Kent, Connecticut, U.S.) is an American writer, animator, actor, and producer who was perhaps best known for creating the television series Family Guy (1999–2003, 2005– ), American Dad (2005– ), The Cleveland Show (2009–13), and The Orville (2017– ).
MacFarlane exhibited an aptitude for cartooning at a young age, and he studied animation at the Rhode Island School of Design. His student film The Life of Larry (1995), an animated short, was seen by executives at Hanna-Barbera Productions, and in 1995 he was offered a job with the studio. There he worked on shows such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Johnny Bravo. In 1996 MacFarlane created a short sequel to The Life of Larry that he called Larry and Steve. The Fox Broadcasting Company then asked him to create a television series based on the dim-witted Larry and his worldly wise-talking dog, Steve. The resulting animated sitcom became Family Guy.
MacFarlane wrote, animated, produced, and provided voice acting for Family Guy, which premiered in 1999, immediately following Super Bowl XXXIII. Although it launched in one of television’s most coveted time slots, the show was later subject to much-less-favourable scheduling. The series told the story of the Griffin family, which included bumbling patriarch Peter, his upper-class wife Lois, daughter Meg, and sons Chris and baby Stewie, as well as the talking dog, Brian. The show was filled with pop-culture references, celebrity voices, and running jokes, and MacFarlane won an Emmy Award in 2000 for his voice-over performance as Stewie. Sometimes deemed offensive because of its adult content, Family Guy was canceled in 2003, only to be brought back two years later after record DVD sales and a successful run in syndication on the Cartoon Network prompted Fox to order new episodes.
The success of Family Guy led to MacFarlane’s involvement in other animated sitcoms. He cocreated, wrote, and produced American Dad!, an irreverent look at the family of an ultrapatriotic CIA agent, which premiered on Fox in 2005; it moved to the TBS channel in 2014. In 2008 he debuted Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, a series of animated shorts released directly to the Internet. The following year The Cleveland Show, a spin-off of Family Guy, appeared, once again with MacFarlane as cocreator and producer; it was canceled in 2013. He then created The Orville (2017– ), a sci-fi dramedy in which he starred as the captain of a spacecraft.
MacFarlane made his feature-film debut in 2012 as the writer and director of Ted, the story of a man (Mark Wahlberg) whose best friend is a teddy bear (voiced by MacFarlane) that was brought to life by a childhood birthday wish. The bawdy comedy grossed more than $500 million worldwide and earned MacFarlane an Academy Award nomination for best original song. He and Wahlberg returned for the 2015 sequel. In 2013 he hosted the 85th Academy Awards ceremony. MacFarlane cowrote, directed, and starred in the comic adventure film A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014). He also adapted the screenplay for the movie as a novel. In 2016 MacFarlane provided the voice of an arrogant mouse who enters a singing competition in the animated family film Sing. He later appeared in Steven Soderbergh’s crime drama Logan Lucky (2017). In 2019 MacFarlane was cast in The Loudest Voice, a miniseries chronicling the rise and fall of Fox News Channel founder Roger Ailes.