Background and career
Michael Thomas Green (born July 30, 1971) is a Canadian-American comedian, television personality, actor, podcaster, singer, songwriter, and rapper. After pursuing stand-up comedy and music as a young adult, Green created and hosted The Tom Green Show, which aired on Rogers TV and later on MTV from 1994 to 2000. The show became popular for its shock comedy, its absurd pranks, and Green's manic persona, and influenced later series such as Jackass, Punk'd, The Eric Andre Show and Kenny vs. Spenny. Green has appeared in the Hollywood films Road Trip (2000), Charlie's Angels (2000), Stealing Harvard (2002), and Shred (2008). Green directed, co-wrote, and starred in the cult film Freddy Got Fingered (2001). He was briefly married to actress Drew Barrymore (2001–2002), who co-starred with him in Charlie's Angels and Freddy Got Fingered. In 2003, Green hosted the short-lived MTV late-night talk show titled The New Tom Green Show. From 2006 until 2011, he hosted an internet talk show called Tom Green's House Tonight from his home, and returned to performing stand-up comedy in 2010. From October 2013 to November 2014, Green hosted the weekly talk show Tom Green Live on American cable network AXS TV. After returning to rural Ontario, Green released three 2025 Prime Video projects: This Is the Tom Green Documentary, the stand-up special Tom Green: I Got a Mule!, and the unscripted series Tom Green Country. In 2026, he launched the Crave talk series The Tom Green Farm and its companion podcast, The Tom Green Farmcast.
Green was born in Pembroke, Ontario, the elder of two sons born to Mary Jane, a communications consultant, and Richard Green, a computer systems analyst and retired army captain. He grew up in nearby Petawawa and later Gloucester (now a part of Ottawa) where he attended Henry Munro Middle School, Colonel By Secondary School and Cairine Wilson Secondary School. Green studied television broadcasting at Algonquin College.
At age 15, Green started performing stand-up comedy at local clubs, including Yuk Yuk's. While a student at Algonquin College and a member of the Sigma Pi Fraternity, Green hosted an overnight call-in show on the University of Ottawa's campus radio station, CHUO. In the early 1990s, Green had a short-lived career as a rapper in a group called Organized Rhyme under the alias "MC Bones". His fellow MCs included "Pin the Chameleon". The single "Check The O.R." was nominated for a Juno Award in 1993 for Best Rap Recording and won the MuchVibe Best Rap Video award in 1992. In 1998, he released Not the Green Tom Show as MC Face.
Green soon had his own non-paid television show on public-access television on cable TV. The first incarnation of The Tom Green Show aired from September 1994 until 1996 as a one-hour non-commercial public cable access program on Rogers Television 22 in the Ottawa region. It had 50 episodes in two seasons. The Tom Green Show was a variety show format, where he would have guests visit the studio and bands play before a live audience. In 1996 he was hired by CBC to do reports from the Atlanta Summer Olympic games. During the road trip in his sweltering un-airconditioned Chrysler K car, Green solved the air conditioning problem by having the roof of the car sawed off, turning it into a permanent "convertible." These CBC feature reports gave him national exposure (in both Canada and the US) with his shocking pranks, antics and humor. In October 1996, The Tom Green Show aired one time as a pilot on CBC. The show was later picked up in Canada by The Comedy Network in 1997 and aired 26 episodes over the course of two seasons.
The Tom Green Show was then picked up by MTV in January 1999, where he gained popularity in the United States and worldwide. The format of the MTV version of the show was similar to his original show; it was hosted by Green and co-hosted by two of his long-time friends, Glenn Humplik, who occupied the couch, and Phil Giroux, who sat behind a window at the back of the set and became known as "the guy in the window" usually drinking cups of coffee. Derek Harvie, who co-wrote the show with Green, occasionally appeared in the segments. Many of the sketches were targeted at his parents, both of whom appear to be unimpressed and embarrassed by their son's antics. The Tom Green Show frequently employed shock humor. Some of Green's most notable skits include pretending to "hump" a dead moose (which was famously referenced by rapper Eminem in "The Real Slim Shady"), having an X-rated lesbian scene painted on his father's car (labeled the "Slut Mobile"), drinking milk by sucking on a cow's teat, and putting a cow head in his parents' bed while they slept because his father was a fan of The Godfather films. Green also hung his own unauthorized piece of art in the National Gallery of Canada (which remained untouched for days) with the added twist of later coming back and vandalizing it to the horror of onlooking patrons. In a segment, Green went to the press conference of Grey Owl where he serenaded and kissed Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan, thinking Green was a journalist, advised him not to give up his day job. Green also did many segments humiliating his co-host and longtime friend Glenn Humplik; even after the pair had become well-known, Humplik continued working at his phone company job, fearing that his entertainment career might not last. Green teased him about this often and once gave out Humplik's office phone number on the air. Green eventually wrote a song called "Lonely Swedish (The Bum Bum Song)", which he composed during MTV's Spring Break while doing a show on a cruise ship. After airing the music video on his show and appealing to his audience to request it, the song became an instant number one hit on Total Request Live and was also referred to in Eminem's song "The Real Slim Shady". He quickly called for the video to be retired because "it's not fair to 98 Degrees." Later, in his autobiography, he revealed that MTV had pressured him to do so in order to maintain the image that Total Request Live was, in fact, a live request show (the next week's episodes had been pre-taped on location, and the producers of the show were completely unaware of "The Bum Bum Song" at the time). Green's increasing fame made it harder for him to ambush people during man-on-the-street segments, leading him to target mostly senior citizens and non-English speakers. After he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in March 2000, he stopped production of new episodes of his TV show but continued to appear on the channel via reruns and other promotional materials. Green's popularity during this time led to him gracing the cover of the June 8, 2000, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. The MTV show Jackass debuted six months after The Tom Green Show went on hiatus. Many of the segments on the show had close similarities to the segments from Green's show: Bam Margera rudely awakening his parents, the cast of Jackass falling down while on crutches, swimming with sharks, etc.
In early 2000, Tom Green was diagnosed with, and successfully treated for testicular cancer. Green wrote, directed and starred in a one-hour MTV television special titled The Tom Green Cancer Special (aired on May 23, 2000), which documented the time leading up to his surgery and included graphic footage of his own surgery. The episode received wide critical acclaim for revealing a vulnerable, human side of an otherwise juvenile television personality. During this time, he started the "Tom Green's Nuts Cancer Fund" to raise money for cancer research. In mid-2000, Green also spoke in front of thousands of students in the University of Florida and sang a song titled "Feel Your Balls" to help educate others about testicular cancer. Although it was Green's cancer that caused The Tom Green Show to cease production, a frequent rumour relates that the show was cancelled because of an alleged segment where Green shows up at a bar mitzvah, or another Jewish event, dressed as Adolf Hitler. Green, however, has repeatedly denied that such a segment exists, and there is no evidence to suggest that such an event occurred. He mentions the rumor in his 2004 autobiography, Hollywood Causes Cancer, stating that it apparently started when some Boston teenagers were caught videotaping themselves performing a similar stunt and when asked by security, they used the name "Tom Green." Green says, "I would never do a mean-spirited, anti-Semitic joke like that – it's both abhorrent and not funny. To this day I still get asked about it, and it's annoying. So again, for the record, it didn't happen. There is nobody on this planet that has ever seen this bit on tape because it does not exist. If it did exist, it would have certainly reared its ugly, hateful head on the Internet by now. But it won't, because it doesn't exist. I've never put on a Hitler costume. In fact, I've never even been to a Bar Mitzvah."
