Bob Odenkirk wrote sketch comedy for years before becoming Saul Goodman
Long before audiences knew him as the slippery lawyer Saul Goodman, Bob Odenkirk was a behind-the-scenes comedy writer at Saturday Night Live and co-creator of the cult sketch show Mr. Show. His late turn into drama brought six lead-actor Emmy nominations for one role alone.
Odenkirk was born in Berwyn, Illinois, on October 22, 1962, and grew up in Naperville, second of seven children in a Catholic family of German and Irish roots. His father worked in printing, and his drinking helped end the parents' marriage, which made Bob wary of alcohol himself. As a teenager he found Naperville stifling and longed for a city. He left high school at 16 with enough credits, tried the College of DuPage and Marquette University, and ended up at Southern Illinois University, where he ran a midnight-to-4 am comedy programme called The Prime Time Special on the campus station WIDB.
Three credits shy of graduating, he headed to Chicago to try improv, finishing his degree in communications in 1984. He studied under Del Close, met Robert Smigel at the Players Workshop and performed at Improv Olympic beside Chris Farley and Tim Meadows. The Smigel partnership carried him to Saturday Night Live, where he wrote from 1987 to 1991 and shared an Emmy for variety writing in 1989. A second writing Emmy followed in 1993 for The Ben Stiller Show.
With David Cross he created and starred in Mr. Show with Bob and David on HBO from 1995 to 1998, a sketch series later seen as hugely influential, and the pair revived the format on Netflix in 2015. He also directed comedies, starting with Melvin Goes to Dinner in 2003.
The dramatic chapter began with Breaking Bad, where he played Saul Goodman from 2009, and deepened in the spin-off Better Call Saul, which ran until 2022. He has since headlined the action film Nobody and its 2025 sequel, both of which he produced, and earned a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut in Glengarry Glen Ross in 2025. Across his career he has collected two Emmys from 18 nominations.
Source: Bob Odenkirk
