Jerome Allen Seinfeld ( SYNE-feld; born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, filmmaker, and television producer specializing in observational comedy. Seinfeld gained stardom playing a fictionalized version of himself in the NBC sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), which he co-created and wrote with Larry David. Seinfeld earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy. The show is one of the most acclaimed and popular sitcoms of all time. He has since created and produced the reality series The Marriage Ref (2010–2011), and created and hosted the web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012–2019), the latter of which earned him three Webby Awards. He also co-produced, co-wrote, and starred in the DreamWorks animated film Bee Movie (2007) and the Netflix comedy Unfrosted (2024). He has released four standup specials, his first being Stand-Up Confidential (1987), followed by I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998), Jerry Before Seinfeld (2017) and 23 Hours to Kill (2020). Seinfeld has received numerous accolades including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three Actor Awards as well as nominations for four Grammy Awards. In 2004, Comedy Central named him the 12th-greatest stand-up comedian of all time. In 2017, Rolling Stone named him the 7th-greatest stand-up comedian of all time. Seinfeld has also written three books starting with SeinLanguage (1993), followed by the children's book Halloween (2002), and the comedic compilation book Is This Anything? (2020). He practices transcendental meditation. He is married to author and philanthropist Jessica Seinfeld, with whom he has three children. His relationship in the 1990s with Shoshanna Lonstein, which began while Seinfeld was 39 years old and Lonstein was a 17-year-old high school student, has been the subject of renewed scrutiny in the 2020s. Seinfeld has made controversial statements in public and in performances in support of Israel in its occupation of Palestine, from comparing the Free Palestine movement to the Ku Klux Klan, stating that Palestine "does not exist", and, during a performance and in response to protesters, stating that he is a racist, and supports the genocide perpetuated against the Palestinians, without subsequently apologizing for these statements.