Ben Browder

In December, 2004, Browder was announced as joining the cast of another sci-fi series, Stargate SG-1, for its 9th season. The song was also used as the title track for the film of the same name. His most recent appearance was in the 2004 movie, A Killer Within, co-starring C. Thomas Howell and Sean Young. wrote and recorded a song about Kaufman, "Man on the Moon", for their 1992 album Automatic for the People. They returned to the United States in 2002 following the cancellation of Farscape. The rock band R.E.M. Buller played several guest roles on the show. It has also been humorously suggested that Ann Coulter might actually be Andy Kaufman.

A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Browder met his wife, fellow actor Francesca Buller, while studying at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. The couple moved with their two children to Australia during the production of Farscape (1999-2002), on which Browder starred as brash American astronaut John Crichton. More likely is that Carrey's sense of humor was influenced by and is similar to Kaufman's. Ben Browder, born December 11, 1962, is an American film and television actor, who garnered a few minor roles in feature films before his leading role on the sci-fi TV series Farscape. However, even if one were to discount Carrey's childhood as a fabrication, he first emerged as an actor in 1983, which is a year too early. (Incidentally, Zmuda was in Batman Forever, which co-starred Carrey.) To "support" this theory, parallels are often drawn from Kaufman's life to Carrey's movies, which include The Majestic, in which Carrey plays a man who loses his memory and lives another person's life, and Me, Myself, and Irene, in which Carrey plays the white father of three African-American males. (Also interestingly, he and Kaufman share the same birthday: January 17th.) Additionally, Carrey's acting was considered uncannily close to the way Kaufman was normally, even according to Kaufman's friend Bob Zmuda.

Carrey is a long-time fan of Kaufman's and fought hard for the role, and even owns Kaufman's conga drums. Usually the celebrity mentioned is Jim Carrey, who starred in the Man on the Moon, the 1999 film about Kaufman's life that was directed by Milos Forman. Another partly facetious theory making the rounds on the Internet is that Kaufman got plastic surgery to dramatically alter his appearance and is a current-day comedian or celebrity. Potentially dozens of fake Kaufmans were expected to appear around this time and this appears to be another example of urban legends inspiring real events.

Since the passing of this date, there have been unsubstantiated reports claiming that Kaufman is back from the dead and has a blog apparently chronicling his comeback (http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com/). However, these claims are highly questionable and are even self-contradictory in places (on the blog he contradicts the, now suspended, press release which he apparently wrote and paid for himself). Kaufman himself even said that were he to fake his death, he would return 20 years later, on May 16, 2004, a claim which has become urban legend. Over the years, many people doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt. Kaufman apparently died on May 16, 1984 of lung cancer and was allegedly interred in the Beth David Cemetery, Elmont, New York (Long Island).

Throughout his entire professional career, Kaufman kept his day job, bussing tables at Jerry's Famous Deli. It was of course entirely a hoax. At one point in the show, he invited gospel singer Kathie Sullivan on stage to sing a few gospel songs with him and announced that the two were engaged to be married and talked to the audience about his newfound faith in Jesus. Later that year, Kaufman returned to host Fridays.

Regardless, Kaufman appeared the following week in a videotaped apology to the home viewers. The entire incident was apparently a gag conceived by Andy Kaufman, but how many people were in on the gag (if any) was never made clear. A stagehand stormed onto the stage, leading to a brawl on camera before the show finally cut away to commercial. Andy responded by splashing Michael Richards with water.

In response, Michael Richards walked off camera and returned with a set of cue cards and dumped on the table in front of Kaufman. The other comedians were embarrassed by the position that Kaufman had put them in on a live television show. During a sketch set in a restaurant, Kaufman broke character and refused to say his lines. Kaufman's first appearance on the show proved to be the most memorable one.

In 1981, Kaufman made a couple of memorable appearances on Fridays, a variety show on ABC that was similar to SNL. Kaufman was devastated. In a gag gone wrong, the SNL audience voted to ban Kaufman from the show for good. Kaufman also made a number of legendary appearances on NBC's Saturday Night Live, until he angered the audience with his female wrestling routine.

Kaufman made ten appearances on David Letterman's morning and late-night shows, including one where he claimed to be homeless and begged the audience for money, and one where he talked about his adopted children, who turned out to be three full grown African American men. In reality, Kaufman was not injured while wrestling Lawler, and in fact, the two were friends. Kaufman and Lawler's famous feud and wrestling matches were all later confirmed as a gag and not real as many believed at the time. Lawler's ongoing feud included an apparent broken neck for Kaufman, and a famous on-air fight on the Late Night with David Letterman television Show.

Later, after a challenge from Professional wrestler Jerry Lawler, Kaufman would step into the ring with a man — Lawler himself. He offered $1,000 reward to any woman that could pin him. For a brief time, Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and was the self-proclaimed "Inter-gender Wrestling Champion of the World". Kaufman grew up admiring professional wrestlers and the fantasy world that they perform in.

At the end of the show, his grandmother stood up, took her mask off and revealed to the audience that she was actually comedian Robin Williams in disguise. In 1979, Kaufman performed in front of a Carnegie Hall audience, which he later took out for milk and cookies, via 35 buses that were waiting outside. At the beginning of his Carnegie Hall performance, Kaufman invited his grandmother to watch the show from a chair he had placed at the side of the stage. Much to Kaufman's delight, this incident was reported in the local newspapers. Clifton was, at Kaufman's insistence, hired for a guest role on Taxi, but after throwing a tantrum on stage, had to be escorted off of the ABC studio's lot by security guards.

The interviews would usually turn ugly whenever Kaufman's name came up, because Clifton would claim that Kaufman was using him to get rich. News programs actually interviewed Clifton as Kaufman's opening act. For a brief time, it was unclear to some that Clifton was not a real person. Sometimes it was Kaufman performing as Clifton, sometimes it was his brother Michael or his friend Bob Zmuda.

Clifton began opening for Kaufman at comedy clubs and eventually even performed concerts on his own around the country. Kaufman's second most well known character would be "Tony Clifton", the abusive lounge singer. They were soon horrified to find out that he was completely serious and would read the entire book to them. The audience would laugh thinking that Kaufman was joking.

Scott Fitzgerald to them. Kaufman would announce that he was going to read The Great Gatsby by F. On a few occasions, audiences would show up to one of Kaufman's performances requesting to see "Latka". In one episode, Kaufman's character came down with a condition which made him act like the character played by Judd Hirsch.

In order to allow Kaufman to demonstrate some comedic range, his character was given multiple personality disorder which allowed Kaufman to display other characters. Kaufman hated sitcoms and was not thrilled with the idea of being on one. Kaufman later reprised his "Foreign Man" character, renamed "Latka Gravas", for the Taxi sitcom in 1978. The audience would realize they had been tricked, which became a trademark of Kaufman's comedy.

At that point, "Foreign Man" would launch into an Elvis Presley impersonation good enough that Elvis Presley himself would later describe it as his favorite. Thenk you veddy much." The audience would be torn between outrage at seeing such a bad act, and sympathy for the hopeless "Foreign Man", who would cry on stage once heckled enough. For example, he might say in a phony accent, "I would like to imitate Meester Carter, de President of de United States." He would then say in the same voice, "Hello, I am Meester Carter, de President of de United States. "Foreign Man", who claimed to be from an island in the Caspian Sea, would appear on the stage of comedy clubs and perform a number of bad impersonations (Archie Bunker, Nixon, etc).

Kaufman first caught people's attention with a character named "Foreign Man" in the early 1970s. He graduated in 1971 from a now-defunct Grahm Junior College where he studied television and completed projects that informed his later work. He was also a composer. He is one of the most famous practitioners of anti-humor.

Though many refer to him as a comedian, Andy himself hated this, saying "I never told a joke in my life". Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman (January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was a New York-born American self-described "song and dance man".