Victor Varnado - Biography

Victor Varnado grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, later moving to Minneapolis, where he worked with the local improvisation troupes ComedySportz MN, The Bad Mamma Jammas and several regional theater companies, before landing his first role in the Big River Productions film Full Moon Rising (1996), playing a copy clerk. Soon after, his role in Giraffe Films' "Kids Adventures in Oz" spurred him on move to New York and to pursue an acting career. His first "big break" came when he landed a role in Elton John's music video "Recovering Your Soul". Shortly after, he starred in Forensic Films' Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) with Ewen Bremner, Werner Herzog and Chloe Sevigny. He was subsequently cast in Universal's feature film La fin des temps (1999), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which was released in November 1999.

He co-stars in Eddie Murphy's space-age comic thriller, Pluto Nash (2002), released nationally on August 16, 2003.

Winner of the Most Valuable Performer award in the 2001 Montreal Just For Laughs Improv Championship, and bronze medallist in the 2002 Comedy Central Laugh Riots National Stand-Up Competition, Varnado can currently be seen as Otis, an outrageous urban comic, in the independent film _Hacks (2001)_. Showing in the New York International Film Festival playing in Los Angeles, "Hacks" is now an official selection for The Milan Film Festival.

Varnado is a member of Chicago City Limits, New York¹s longest running comedy improv theater company for which he writes and direct as well as performing regularly as a stand up comedian.