Christopher Guest

He also acted in the films Death Wish (1974), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), and A Few Good Men (1992); and was a regular cast member on the 10th season of Saturday Night Live. Guest holds a hereditary British peerage as the 5th Baron Haden-Guest. He was an active member of the House of Lords from 1996 until the 1999 reforms abolished his seat. When his title is used, he should be styled as Lord Haden-Guest. Guest is married to the actress Jamie Lee Curtis.

Christopher Guest studied at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, High School of Music & Art and Stella Adler Studio of Acting. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is film, film screenwriting and film direction. Places of work recorded in the authority are London and United States. Residence is recorded at Santa Monica. Positions recorded include member of the House of Lords. Works named in the authority record are The Folksmen. Work by Christopher Guest is recorded in the collections of Museum of Modern Art.

• Honorific Prefix — The Right Honourable • Name — The Lord Haden-Guest • Office — Member of the House of Lords • Status — Lord Temporal • Term Label — as a hereditary peer • Term Start — April 8, 1996 • Predecessor — The 4th Baron Haden-Guest • Term End — November 11, 1999 • Successor — Seat abolished • Birth Name — Christopher Haden-Guest • Born — 5 February 1948 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Education — New York University (MFA) • Children — 2

Guest was born on February 5, 1948 in New York City, the son of Peter Haden-Guest, a British United Nations diplomat who later became the 4th Baron Haden-Guest, and his second wife, the former Jean Pauline Hindes, an American former vice president of casting at CBS. Both of Guest's parents were atheists, and Guest himself had no religious upbringing. Guest spent parts of his childhood in the UK, but he attended the High School of Music & Art in New York City. Additionally he studied classical music (clarinet) at the Stockbridge School in the village of Interlaken in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. He later took up the mandolin, became interested in country music, and played guitar with Arlo Guthrie, a fellow student at Stockbridge School. Guest later began performing with bluegrass bands until transitioning to rock and roll. Guest attended Bard College for a year and then studied acting at New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1971.

Guest began his career in theatre during the early 1970s with one of his earliest professional performances being the role of Norman in Michael Weller's Moonchildren for the play's American premiere at the Arena Stage in Washington, DC, in November 1971. Guest continued with the production when it moved to Broadway in 1972. The following year, he began making contributions to The National Lampoon Radio Hour for a variety of National Lampoon audio recordings. He both performed comic characters (Flash Bazbo—Space Explorer, Mr. Rogers, music critic Roger de Swans, and sleazy record company rep Ron Fields) and wrote, arranged, and performed numerous musical parodies (of Bob Dylan, James Taylor, and others). He was featured alongside Chevy Chase and John Belushi in the off-Broadway revue National Lampoon's Lemmings. Two of his earliest film roles were small parts as uniformed police officers in the 1972 film The Hot Rock and 1974's Death Wish. Along with Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and others, Guest was one of the "Prime Time Players" on Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. This was the short-lived variety show that aired from September 20, 1975, to January 17, 1976, not to be confused with the long-running sketch show Saturday Night Live, which began airing a month later and lampooned the group by billing their own sketch comedy actors as "The Not Ready for Prime Time Players". Guest played a small role in the 1977 All in the Family episode "Mike and Gloria Meet", where in a flashback sequence Mike and Gloria recall their first blind date, set up by Michael's college buddy Jim (Guest), who dated Gloria's girlfriend Debbie (Priscilla Lopez). Guest also had a small but important role in It Happened One Christmas, the 1977 gender-reversed TV remake of the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life, starring Marlo Thomas as Mary Bailey (the Jimmy Stewart role), with Cloris Leachman as Mary's guardian angel and Orson Welles as the villainous Mr. Potter. Guest played Mary's brother Harry, who returned from the Army in the final scene, speaking one of the last lines of the film: "A toast! To my big sister Mary, the richest person in town!"

Guest's biggest role of the first two decades of his career is likely that of Nigel Tufnel in the 1984 Rob Reiner film This Is Spinal Tap. Guest made his first appearance as Tufnel on the 1978 sketch comedy program The TV Show. Along with Martin Short, Billy Crystal, and Harry Shearer, Guest was hired as a one-year-only cast member for the 1984–1985 season on NBC's Saturday Night Live. Recurring characters on SNL played by Guest include Frankie, of Willie and Frankie (coworkers who recount in detail physically painful situations in which they have found themselves, remarking laconically "I hate when that happens"); Herb Minkman, a novelty toymaker with his brother Al (played by Crystal); Rajeev Vindaloo, an eccentric foreign man in the same vein as Andy Kaufman's Latka character from Taxi; and Señor Cosa, a Spanish ventriloquist often seen on the recurring spoof of The Joe Franklin Show. He also experimented behind the camera with pre-filmed sketches, notably directing a documentary-style short starring Shearer and Short as synchronized swimmers. In another short film from SNL, Guest and Crystal appear in blackface as retired Negro league baseball players, "The Rooster and the King". He appeared as Count Rugen (the "six-fingered man") in The Princess Bride. He had a cameo role as the first customer, a pedestrian, in the 1986 musical remake of The Little Shop of Horrors. As a co-writer and director, Guest made the Hollywood satire The Big Picture. Upon his father succeeding to the family peerage in 1987, he was known as "the Hon. Christopher Haden-Guest". This was his official style and name until he inherited the barony in 1996.

The experience of making This is Spinal Tap directly informed the second phase of his career. Starting in 1996, Guest began writing, directing, and acting in his own series of substantially improvised films. Many of them are considered definitive examples of what came to be known as "mockumentaries"—not a term Guest appreciates. Together, Guest, his frequent writing partner Eugene Levy, and a small band of actors have formed a loose repertory group, which appears in several films. These include Catherine O'Hara, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Bob Balaban, Jane Lynch, John Michael Higgins, Harry Shearer, Jennifer Coolidge, Ed Begley Jr., Jim Piddock and Fred Willard. Guest and Levy write backgrounds for each of the characters and notecards for each specific scene, outlining the plot, and then leave it up to the actors to improvise the dialogue, which is supposed to result in a much more natural conversation than scripted dialogue would. Typically, everyone who appears in these movies receives the same fee and the same portion of profits. Among the films performed in this manner, which have been written and directed by Guest, include Waiting for Guffman (1996), about a community theatre group, Best in Show (2000), about the dog show circuit, A Mighty Wind (2003), about folk singers, For Your Consideration (2006), about the hype surrounding Oscar season, and Mascots (2016), about a sports team mascot competition. Guest had a guest voice-over role in the animated comedy series SpongeBob SquarePants as SpongeBob's cousin, Stanley. Guest again collaborated with Reiner in A Few Good Men (1992), appearing as Dr. Stone. In the 2000s, Guest appeared in the 2005 biographical musical Mrs Henderson Presents and in the 2009 comedy The Invention of Lying. He is also a member of the musical group The Beyman Bros, which he formed with childhood friend David Nichtern and Spinal Tap's keyboardist C. J. Vanston. Their debut album Memories of Summer as a Child was released on January 20, 2009. In 2010, the United States Census Bureau paid $2.5 million to have a television commercial directed by Guest shown during television coverage of Super Bowl XLIV. Guest holds an honorary doctorate from and is a member of the board of trustees for Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 2013, Guest was the co-writer and producer of the HBO series Family Tree, in collaboration with Jim Piddock, a story in the style he made famous in This is Spinal Tap, in which the main character, Tom Chadwick, inherits a box of curios from his great-aunt, spurring interest in his ancestry. On August 11, 2015, Netflix announced that Mascots, a film directed by Guest and co-written with Jim Piddock, about the competition for the World Mascot Association championship's Gold Fluffy Award, would debut in 2016. Guest was offered an opportunity to do another film for Netflix, but, by his own account, didn't have an idea for one and essentially decided to retire instead. He did reprise his role as Count Tyrone Rugen at a table read in the Princess Bride Reunion on September 13, 2020. After a nine-year absence from film acting, Guest came out of retirement in 2025 to reprise the role of Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.

Guest became the 5th Baron Haden-Guest, of Great Saling, in the County of Essex, when his father died in 1996. His older half-brother, Anthony Haden-Guest, was ineligible to succeed as he was born before his parents married. Guest sat in the House of Lords regularly until the House of Lords Act 1999 barred him (and most hereditary peers) from their seats. Guest remarked: There's no question that the old system was unfair. I mean, why should you be born to this? But now it's all just sheer cronyism. The prime minister can put in whoever he wants and bus them in to vote. The Upper House should be an elected body, it's that simple. Guest married actress Jamie Lee Curtis in 1984 at the home of their mutual friend Rob Reiner. They have two daughters, through adoption. Guest was played by Seth Green in the film A Futile and Stupid Gesture.

• Year — Title — Actor — Screenwriter — Director — Producer — Role — Notes • 1975 — Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell — Variety series • The Lily Tomlin Special — TV special • Kojak — Sound Man (uncredited) — Episodes: "Question of Answers Pt. 1 & Pt. 2" • 1976 — The Billion Dollar Bubble — Al Green — TV film • TVTV Looks at the Oscars — TV special • TVTV: Super Bowl • The TVTV Show — Various • 1977 — It Happened One Christmas — Harry Bailey — TV film • The Andros Targets — Gordon Hamilton — Episode: "A Currency for Murder" • All in the Family — Jim — Episode: "Mike and Gloria Meet" • 1978 — Laverne & Shirley — Greg Harris — Episode: "Bus Stop" • Peeping Times — Television special • 1979 — Blind Ambition — Jeb Stuart Magruder — Miniseries • The Chevy Chase National Humor Test — Various — Television special • 1980 — Haywire — The T.V. Director — Television film • 1982 — Million Dollar Infield — Bucky Frische • A Piano for Mrs. Cimino — Philip Ryan • St. Elsewhere — H.J. Cummings — 2 episodes • 1984–85 — Saturday Night Live — Various — 19 episodes • 1986 — Shelley Duvall's Tall Tales & Legends — Episode: "Johnny Appleseed" • 1989 — Trying Times — Episode: "The Sad Professor" • Billy Crystal: Midnight Train to Moscow — The Voice — Stand-up special • I, Martin Short, Goes Hollywood — Antoninus DiMentabella • 1991 — Morton & Hayes — El Supremo / Crooner / Dr. Von Astor — Directed 5 episodes; acted in 3 episodes Composed theme music • Amnesty International's Big 3-0 — Nigel Tufnel — Television special • 1992 — The Simpsons — Nigel Tufnel — Episode: "The Otto Show" Voice • 1993 — Animaniacs — Umlatt — Episode: "King Yakko" Voice • Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman — Television film; also composer • 1999 — Dilbert — The Dupey — Episode: "The Dupey" Voice • 2003 — MADtv — Alan Barrows — Episode #8.21 • 2007, 2021 — SpongeBob SquarePants — Stanley S. SquarePants / Clem Clam — 2 episodes: "Stanley S. SquarePants", "Goofy Scoopers" Voice • 2009 — Stonehenge: 'Tis a Magic Place — Nigel Tufnel — 3 episodes • 2012 — 84th Academy Awards — Focus Group Member — Directed focus group segment • 2013 — Family Tree — Dave Chadwick / Phineas Chadwick — 3 episodes; also co-creator Composed credits theme

Guest has worked multiple times with certain actors, notably with frequent writing partner Eugene Levy, who has appeared in five of his projects. Other repeat collaborators of Guest include Don Lake (8 projects); Fred Willard (7 projects); Michael McKean, Bob Balaban, and Ed Begley Jr. (6 projects each); Paul Benedict, Parker Posey, Jim Piddock, Michael Hitchcock and Harry Shearer (5 projects each); Catherine O'Hara, Larry Miller, John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, and Jennifer Coolidge (4 projects each); Paul Dooley, Fran Drescher, Rachael Harris and Rob Reiner (3 projects each) • rowspan=2 • This Is Spinal Tap — The Big Picture — Morton & Hayes — Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman — Waiting for Guffman — Almost Heroes — Best in Show — A Mighty Wind — For Your Consideration — Family Tree — Mascots — Spinal Tap II: The End Continues • Bob Balaban • Ed Begley Jr. • Paul Benedict • Jennifer Coolidge • Paul Dooley • Fran Drescher • Christopher Guest • Rachael Harris • John Michael Higgins • Michael Hitchcock • Don Lake • Eugene Levy • Jane Lynch • Michael McKean • Larry Miller • Catherine O'Hara • Jim Piddock • Parker Posey • Rob Reiner • Harry Shearer • Fred Willard

His recorded language was English. He married Jamie Lee Curtis. 2 children are recorded: Ruby Guest and Annie Guest. Other recorded relations include Kelly Curtis.