On September 11th, 1999 show of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" (1993), announced his retirement from the show 9 months hence (mid-May 2000).
Set a record on Celebrity Jeopardy! for most money earned at $29,400 ($24,400 + $5000 victory bonus). [1999]
Was high school prom king.
Attended Yorkville High School in Yorkville, Illinois.
While attending Columbia College in Chicago, Andy had the title role in a class film called "My Dinner with Andy," a parody of the film _My Diner with Andre (1981)_ .
Attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Andy Richter Detailed Biography
While he rose to fame as a talk show sidekick, Andy Richter has since developed a reputation as a talented and likable comic actor with roles on a number of feature films and television series. Born in Grand Rapids, MI, in 1966, Andy Richter spent most of his childhood in Yorkville, IL. After graduating from high school (where he was voted Prom King in his senior year), Andy Richter attended the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign; Andy Richter later studied film and video production at Columbia College. Richter began pursuing a career as a performer in Chicago, where Andy Richter studied improvisational theater with Del Close and worked with a number of improv comedy groups, including the Annoyance Theater, ImprovOlympia, and Comedy Underground. Richter's first notable success as a performer came in 1992 when he landed the role of Mike Brady in the off-Broadway stage success The Real Live Brady Bunch, a stage adaptation of the perennially popular TV sitcom; Andy Richter was a member of the original New York cast, and moved with the show to Los Angeles later that year.
While in L.A., Andy Richter scored his first film role, a small but showy part in the Chris Elliott-vehicle Cabin Boy, but his biggest stroke of luck came when he was hired as a writer for a new talk show being hosted by former Simpsons and Late Night With David Letterman writer Conan O'Brien. Andy Richter and O'Brien soon discovered they had a natural comic rapport, and by the time Late Night With Conan O'Brien debuted in the fall of 1993, Andy Richter had become O'Brien's on-air sidekick, exchanging banter with the host and participating in a variety of comic sketches. The show's five-airings-a-week schedule kept Richter busy, but also allowed him to develop a strong fan following of his own, and he occasionally found time for outside projects, including appearing in an off-Broadway play written by David Sedaris and his sister, Amy Sedaris, Incident at Cobbler's Knob. In the summer of 1999, Andy Richter announced he would be leaving Late Night in May of 2000 to devote himself to other projects, and he soon began appearing in a variety of film roles, among them one of Richard Gere's hunting buddies in Dr. T and the Women, Eugene in Dr. Dolittle 2, and Father Harris in Scary Movie 2; he also made occasional guest spots on television series, including Just Shoot Me. In his private life, Andy Richter married actress Sarah Thyre -- who played Marcia alongside Richter in The Real Live Brady Bunch -- in 1994; the couple has one son. Andy Richter also has the distinction of being one of the highest-scoring celebrity contestants in the history of the popular game show Jeopardy, winning over 29,000 dollars for charity.
