Azaria was born in Queens, New York City, the son of Eastern Sephardic Jewish parents, Ruth (Altcheck) and Albert Azaria. His grandparents on both sides hailed from Thessaloniki, from Greece's Spanish Jewish community established there after the 1492 exile from Spain. His family's spoken language at home was the Ladino language, which Azaria has described as "a strange, antiquated Spanish dialect written in Hebrew characters." Azaria's father ran several dress-manufacturing businesses, while his mother raised him and his two older sisters, Stephanie and Elise.

Azaria wrote and directed the 2004 short film Nobody's Perfect, which won the Film Discovery Jury Award for Best Short at the US Comedy Arts Festival. In January 2007, he was confirmed to be directing Outsourced, a film about two American workers who journey to get their jobs back, after their factory is moved to Mexico. In 2009, Azaria told Empire he was instead focusing on making a documentary about fatherhood. Two years later he told the Los Angeles Times that this project was "half-complete" and was "forever looking for financing to finish it." It eventually began in 2014, airing on AOL as an online series titled Fatherhood. According to AOL, the series of short episodes documents Azaria's "touching, humorous, and often enlightening journey from a man who is not even sure he wants to have kids, to a father going through the joys, trials and tribulations of being a dad." He has periodically returned to theatrical work, appearing in several productions. In 2003, he appeared as Bernard in a run of David Mamet's play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, along with Matthew Perry and Minnie Driver, in London's West End. Azaria made his first appearance as Sir Lancelot, the French Taunter, and four other characters in Spamalot, the musical version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which opened in Chicago in December 2004, before moving to the Shubert Theatre on Broadway. The show met with critical acclaim, receiving fourteen Tony Award nominations in 2005, with Azaria being nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical. Reuniting with The Birdcage director Mike Nichols, and being a huge Monty Python fan, he saw it as an opportunity he could not pass up, describing it as "so much fun that I haven't realized how tiring it is", and "the most fun that I've ever had in my entire life". He took a break from the show in June 2005, with Alan Tudyk filling in for him, to work on Huff, but returned in December 2005. In late 2007 he starred in Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention, playing RCA head David Sarnoff. In 2016, he starred in the world premiere of Dry Powder opposite Claire Danes, John Krasinski, and Sanjit De Silva, directed by Thomas Kail, at the off-Broadway Public Theater in New York City. Azaria starred in and co-wrote the third episode of the Funny or Die web-series Gamechangers, entitled "A Legend in the Booth". He played Jim Brockmire, a legendary baseball announcer, fired for a profanity-filled breakdown live on air after discovering his wife was having an affair. Azaria based the voice and style of Brockmire on several veteran sportscasters, including Bob Murphy and Phil Rizzuto. He has since appeared as Brockmire on the NFL Network's The Rich Eisen Podcast to discuss the National Football League. In November 2012, Azaria sued actor Craig Bierko over the ownership of the Brockmire voice. The case was ruled in Azaria's favour in 2014. Both actors had been using a baseball announcer voice before and since meeting at a party in 1990, but US district judge Gary Allen Feess ruled that only Azaria's voice was, as Brockmire, a defined, "tangible" character and thus subject to copyright. CANNOTANSWER

Ask a question about this article.

Did he win any awards?