Jim Downey Net Worth

What is Jim Downey’s Net Worth?

Jim Downey is a comedy writer and actor who has a net worth of $2 million. Jim Downey is best known as a writer and sometimes performer on the late-night live sketch comedy television show “Saturday Night Live,” which he joined in 1976. Downey wrote for over 30 nonconsecutive seasons of the show through 2013, making him the longest-tenured writer in “SNL” history. He also wrote for the talk show “Late Night with David Letterman” from 1982 to 1984.

Early Life and Education

Jim Downey was born in 1952 in Berkeley, California and was raised in Joliet, Illinois. After graduating from Joliet Catholic High School, he attended Harvard University, where he wrote for and eventually served as president of the Harvard Lampoon paper. Downey graduated from Harvard with a degree in Russian in 1974.

Jim Downey (Photo by Brian Ach/WireImage for Variety Magazine)

Saturday Night Live

In 1976, Downey joined the writing staff of the newly launched late-night sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live,” becoming its youngest member. During his first writing stretch from 1976 to 1980, he wrote with Dan Aykroyd, Al Franken, and Tom Davis, among other writers. During the 1979-80 “SNL” season, following the departure of Aykroyd and John Belushi, Downey became a featured cast member. However, he left the show after that season as part of a mass exodus of writers and actors who left in the wake of creator Lorne Michaels’s departure. Downey returned to “SNL” in 1984 when Dick Ebersol was serving as the show’s producer. He went on to become the show’s head writer in 1985, when Michaels returned. Downey remained the head writer on “SNL” through 1995, giving him the longest tenure of any “SNL” head writer to date. He subsequently began writing exclusively for the show’s “Weekend Update” segment, working with the segment’s star Norm Macdonald. In 1998, both Downey and Macdonald were fired from “SNL” for their repeated jokes about O. J. Simpson, which reportedly upset his good friend Don Ohlmeyer, an NBC executive.

Downey returned to “SNL” in 2000 and continued to write for the show until 2013, taking only a short break between 2005 and 2006. Notably, in 2000, he coined the Bushism “strategery” in a sketch about the presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore, a word that was soon used with humor by political pundits and members of the Bush administration itself. Following the end of the 38th season of “SNL” in 2013, Downey retired as the longest-tenured writer in the show’s history, having written for over 30 nonconsecutive seasons. In addition to his role as a writer, he appeared in over 40 sketches between 1977 and 2007, including various commercial parodies and the Digital Short “Andy’s Dad,” in which he played the father of cast member Andy Samberg.

Other Television Shows

After leaving “SNL” the first time, Downey became the head writer of the newly created talk show “Late Night with David Letterman,” which debuted in early 1982. He worked on the show until 1984. Early that year, Downey wrote five episodes of Lorne Michaels’s short-lived sketch comedy show “The New Show.” Later in the decade, he had his first substantial acting role on television, playing Sam Phillips in three episodes of the final season of the CBS sitcom “Kate & Allie.” Downey mostly focused on “SNL” after that. He returned to acting on other shows in the 2010s, with guest roles on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “30 Rock,” and “Veep.” In 2020, Downey voiced California US representative Adam Schiff in an episode of the Showtime adult animated series “Our Cartoon President.”

Film Career

Downey has made a handful of appearances on film. Memorably, he played the sarcastic high school principal in the 1995 Adam Sandler comedy “Billy Madison,” delivering the film’s famous monologue insulting Sandler’s dimwitted title character. In 1998, Downey played a homeless person in the Norm Macdonald comedy “Dirty Work,” and in 2007 he played real estate broker Al Rose in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic period drama “There Will Be Blood.”