Seth Woodbury MacFarlane is his full name.1)
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane was born in Kent, Connecticut on October 26, 1973.2)
Ronald Milton MacFarlane and Ann Perry, his parents, were born in Newburyport, Massachusetts.3)
Rachael Ann MacFarlane, a voice actor, is his sister (born 1976).4)
He has New England ancestors dating back to the 1600s, and he is a descendent of Mayflower passenger William Brewster.5)
MacFarlane's parents met in 1970 while both living and working in Boston, Massachusetts, and married the following year.6)
Ann began working in the Admissions Office at South Kent School when the couple relocated to Kent in 1972. She went on to work in the College Guidance and Admissions Offices at the Kent School, a prestigious college preparation school where Ronald taught.7)
MacFarlane took a passion in artwork during his youth and began sketching cartoon characters Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker as early as two years old.8)
MacFarlane knew he wanted to be an animator at the age of five, and he began by making flip books after his parents acquired a book on the subject for him.9)
MacFarlane began creating a weekly comic strip titled “Walter Crouton” for The Kent Good Times Dispatch, a small newspaper in Kent, Connecticut, four years later, at the age of nine.10)
MacFarlane claimed in an October 2011 interview that as a youngster, he was always “weirdly captivated with the Communion ceremony”.11)
He made a comic strip with a figure kneeling at the altar receiving Communion and asking, “Can I have fries with that?” ”. The paper published it, and he received a “angry letter” from the local priest, resulting in “kind of a little mini-controversy” in town.12)
MacFarlane graduated from the Kent School in 1991 with a high school diploma. He continued to play with animation while there, and his parents got him an 8 mm camera.13)
MacFarlane went on to acquire a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in cinema, video, and animation from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).14)
At RISD, MacFarlane made a number of independent films before meeting future Family Guy cast member Mike Henry, whose brother Patrick was a student of MacFarlane's.15)
MacFarlane used to do stand-up comedy at RISD.16)
During his final year at RISD, MacFarlane developed a thesis film titled The Life of Larry, which later became Family Guy.17)
MacFarlane's professor pitched his film to Hanna-Barbera, where he was eventually employed.18)
MacFarlane is the creator of the TV shows Family Guy (1999-2003, 2005-present), American Dad! (2005-present), and The Cleveland Show (2009–13). He also co-wrote, directed, and appeared in Ted (2012), Ted 2 (2015), and A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014).19)
He was hired by Hanna-Barbera as an animator and writer for various television shows, including Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Dexter's Laboratory, I Am Weasel, and Larry & Steve.20)
As an actor, he has appeared in episodes of Gilmore Girls, The War at Home, and FlashForward.21)
Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy, his own YouTube series, debuted in 2008. 22)
For his work on Family Guy, he received two Primetime Emmy Awards and one Annie Award.23)
He received the Webby Award for Film & Video Person of the Year in 2009. He talks in universities and colleges around the United States on occasion, and he is a proponent of LGBT rights.24)
Ted, MacFarlane's debut feature-length comedy picture, stars him as the titular anthropomorphic teddy bear and became the highest-grossing original R-rated comedy.25)
MacFarlane has performed in a variety of settings, including Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall, as a vocalist.26)
Beginning with Music Is Better Than Words in 2011, MacFarlane has released six studio albums in the style of his musical idol, Frank Sinatra.27)
For Ted, he composed the lyrics to the Academy Award-nominated song “Everybody Needs a Best Friend”.28)
MacFarlane was an executive producer for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a reboot of Carl Sagan's 1980s Cosmos series hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson.29)
MacFarlane compared himself to Brian Griffin from Family Guy in a 2004 interview with The Daily Princetonian, saying, “I have some Brian type concerns from time to time - looking for the right person - but I date as much as the next guy”.30)