He was born on May 25, 1970, in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, as the youngest of six children to parents who were a machinist and paralegal. He spent much of his childhood trying to get attention and went so far as to fake a heart attack when he was eight in order to turn the tide of a losing basketball game.

Kennedy graduated from Monsignor Bonner High School in 1988 and went on to study at the Delaware County Community College. He dropped out of every class except acting, and ended dropping out of school to move to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.

He ended up getting several roles as movie extras, but couldn’t get any substantial acting roles. So he supported himself by working in various restaurants and eateries, and briefly as comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo’s maid.

Kennedy eventually was able to land a few stand-up comedy jobs in small venues. Not all of the performances were successful and he sometimes ended up getting booed off stage. But he persevered and managed to land a few better routines in venues like the Laugh Factory and the Improv.

Using his skills at voice impersonations, Kennedy created his own agent, Marty Power, whom he hoped people would mistake for the well-known agent, Marty Bauer. Armed with a gravelly Bronx accent, the fictitious Marty Power (aka Kennedy) attracted the attention of real agents and managers.

Kennedy got his first big break when he was cast in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet in 1996. He followed this up with roles in Wes Craven’s major motion films Scream and Scream 2 and a cameo in Scream 3. Between the three Scream movies, they starred Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Matthew Lillard, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jerry O'Connell, Patrick Dempsey, Parker Posey, and Scott Foley. For his role as geeky Randy Meeks in the original Scream, Kennedy received a Blockbuster Best Supporting Actor Award.

Additional movie roles followed alongside Steve Martin in Bowfinger and George Clooney in Three Kings. Kennedy formed a production company called Wannabe Producers with Josh Etting, and in 2002 started the television show The Jamie Kennedy Experiment. The show started out with amazing rankings, attracting three million viewers each week, but was cancelled in April 2004 due to falling ratings.

In 2003 he wrote and starred in the comedic feature film Malibu’s Most Wanted. He co-wrote his autobiography in 2004 with Ellen Rapaport called Wannabe: A Hollywood Experiment. In 2006, he co-wrote the MTV show Blowin’ Up. On October 21, 2006 he hosted Fuse TV’s Fuse Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.

YUDDY