Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (born October 26, 1973 in Kent, Connecticut) is an Emmy-winning American animator, screenwriter, producer, director, and voice actor. He is best known as the creator of the animated series Family Guy and American Dad!.

Early career

MacFarlane received his diploma at the Kent School in Connecticut, whose headmaster later publicly rebuked MacFarlane for his "low" brand of humor. He went on to study animation at the Rhode Island School of Design, which inspired the Rhode Island setting of Family Guy. While in college, he created a short film entitled The Life of Larry, an early ancestor of Family Guy. After graduation, he was hired by Hanna-Barbera Productions and later worked as an animator and writer for Cartoon Network's Cartoon Cartoons series, which included Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Laboratory and Cow and Chicken. He was also a writer for the animated version of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

In 1996, MacFarlane created a sequel to The Life of Larry for Hanna-Barbera Cartoons called Larry and Steve, which featured the bumbling middle-aged Larry and his highly intelligent dog Steve. The short was broadcast as one of Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons. Executives at FOX saw both Larry shorts and contracted MacFarlane to create a series based on the characters.

Immediately before starting Family Guy in 1998, Fred Seibert (who brought MacFarlane to Hanna-Barbera) asked him to write and produce a short titled "Zoomates" for Frederator Studios' Oh Yeah! Cartoons on Nickelodeon.

MacFarlane is a skilled pianist and singer who, as a young man, worked with the same vocal coaches as Frank Sinatra. He is an avid fan of musicals and often employs musical numbers in his work.

Family Guy
Main article: Family Guy

Seth MacFarlane voices many of the main characters on the TV show Family Guy, an animated series which follows the life of the Griffin family. On the show, MacFarlane provides the voices of Peter, a bumbling oaf and patriarch of the Griffin family, Brian, the eloquent, rational, and alcoholic dog, Stewie, the megalomaniacal and comically intelligent infant, Glenn Quagmire, the sex-maniac neighbor, and Tom Tucker, a local news anchor. He also voices many characters who only occasionally appear on the show.

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American Dad!
Main article: American Dad!

American Dad!, MacFarlane's latest undertaking, was first shown after Super Bowl XXXIX as a sneak preview on February 6, 2005. It then began airing regularly on FOX on May 1, 2005. It focuses on Stan Smith, a CIA agent convinced that terrorists are everywhere, even in his own household. He has a loving wife and two children, along with two unusual houseguests: Roger, the extraterrestrial alien who rescued Stan from Area 51, and Klaus the goldfish who hosts the transplanted brain of an East German Olympic skier. In 2006, American Dad! was picked up by Fox for two more seasons. Seth provides the voice of Stan, while his sister Rachael voices Stan's daughter Hayley.

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Notable guest appearances

MacFarlane is an avid fan of Star Trek and has appeared as the engineer Ensign Rivers on the show Star Trek: Enterprise in the third season episode "The Forgotten" (3.20), and the fourth season episode "Affliction" (4.15). Since then, Patrick Stewart has had a recurring role as the director of the CIA in American Dad! (and also reprised his famed role of Jean Luc Picard in an episode of Family Guy). MacFarlane also appeared in a 2002 episode of the Gilmore Girls, entitled "Lorelai's Graduation Day" (2.21) as a classmate of Lorelai's (a number of episodes of Family Guy were produced by Gilmore Girls producer and writer Daniel Palladino, husband of the show's creator Amy Sherman-Palladino). Not only did he voice Wayne "The Main Brain" McClain in an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, he has also voiced various characters on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, including a parody of Lion-O.

He has also lent his voice of Stewie to Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, often mocking Bill O'Reilly, Olbermann's main rival on Fox News Channel by saying "Oh, wait Bill. Stay right where you are, I want to soil on you. Victory is mine!"

MacFarlane was invited by Harvard University's class of 2006 to deliver the "class day" address on June 7, 2006. He spoke as himself, as Peter Griffin, as Stewie Griffin, and as Glenn Quagmire. Videos of the speech can be found on YouTube, Google Video, and among the external links at the end of this article. At the end of his speech, he was presented with an honorary degree.

MacFarlane spoke at The George Washington University on September 16, 2006, and showed the episode to be aired the following day.

September 11, 2001 experience

On the morning of the September 11, 2001 attacks, MacFarlane was scheduled to return to Los Angeles on American Airlines Flight 11 after being a keynote speaker at his alma-mater in Rhode Island. In 2005, on episodes of Loveline and Too Late with Adam Carolla, MacFarlane stated that he tried to make the flight, but arrived about ten minutes after final boarding ended. At 8:14 am, fifteen minutes after the departure of American Airlines Flight 11, the plane was hijacked before it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. He often jokes that he arrived late because he was hungover from the night before and jokingly says, "Drinking can save your life." He was then told he would need to wait for the next flight and then sat down next to someone as they were watching the attacks and he said to the man beside him, "I was supposed to be on that flight." In an interview in USA Today a few days after the attacks, he said that he was unable to get in touch with his office or his family in Los Angeles. He ended up driving halfway across the country before he finally was able to contact his office and parents to tell them that he was all right.

In an interview with TVShowsOnDVD.com, MacFarlane had the following to say about his 9/11 close call:
"The only reason it hasn't really affected me as it maybe could have is I didn't really know that I was in any danger until after it was over, so I never had that panic moment. After the fact, it was sobering, but people have a lot of close calls; you're crossing the street and you almost get hit by a car ... this one just happened to be related to something massive. I really can't let it affect me because I'm a comedy writer. I have to put that in the back of my head."

                       

Courtesy of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_MacFarlane