Ross (David Schwimmer)

Birthdate: November 12th, 1966 Queens, NY

Raised in Los Angeles

Son of lawyer parents

Attended Beverly Hills High School




Graduated from Northwestern University with an A.B.S. in Speech/Theater in 1988




WHEN the producers of Friends were trolling Hollywood's talent pool for attractive twentysomething actors, David Schwimmer was already in their net. The soon-to-be hit sitcom's creators designed the role of nebbishy, nerdy, neurotic Ross Geller with Schwimmer in mind, and they cast the endearingly dorky actor without an audition. Such faith was not misguided: Friends rocketed up the ratings; audiences loved Ross; and Schwimmer assumed star status.
Ironically, Schwimmer accepted Friends' casting invitation with reluctance, for he had promised himself no more sitcoms after a miserable experience on Henry Winkler's stillborn 1994 series Monty. Besides, ever since his days as a student at Beverly Hills High, David Schwimmer has fancied himself a man of the theatuh. He and classmate Jonathan Silverman, sometime star of The Single Guy, both acted in several productions at the academic/celebrity-training institution. Upon graduation, Schwimmer headed to Chicago's Northwestern University, where he toyed with pursuing medical or legal studies, in deference to his lawyer parents. (Schwimmer's mother handled Roseanne's first divorce.)
But the lure of the stage superseded that of the courtroom, and Schwimmer went on to earn a degree in theatre and speech. Once out of school, Schwimmer co-founded Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre Company, and the troupe has been his passion ever since. Schwimmer made a brief foray into television in 1989, when he was cast as a murderous boyfriend in a TV movie, A Deadly Silence (1989), but this first Hollywood experience was so dreadful that Schwimmer returned to Chicago and immersed himself in Lookingglass productions and plenty of Friends-style loafing.