Dave Foley biography

The Kids in the Hall developed a cult following and earned widespread critical acclaim. The show was nominated for several Emmy Awards and won Canada's Gemini Award multiple times. Despite their success, the cast suffered from intense off-screen fights. "You had to fight to get your stuff through the filter of the group and convince everybody that what you were doing was funny," Foley remembers. "We never had a mechanism with each other for compromise."

In 1995,

The Kids in the Hall began work on a film, Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy, but after one too many fights over the script, Foley left the group. (Foley eventually did appear in the 1996 film, but he is the only member of the group not credited as a writer).

Mainstream Success

After leaving The Kids in the Hall, Foley immediately landed his next big role on the NBC sitcom NewsRadio. He played closeted Canadian news director Dave Nelson -- a part written especially for Foley. After spending a decade in a comedy troupe, Foley says that he welcomed the return to relative normalcy that came with acting in a sitcom. He recalls, "It was a huge relief, not being a member of a troupe, being able to make your own decisions and kind of live your own life."

While working in the ensemble casts of The Kids in the Hall and NewsRadio, Foley also enjoyed a successful solo career as film and television actor. He made his big-screen debut in the 1986 film High Stakes and appeared in the universally panned 1994 film It's Pat, for which he earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Screen Couple.

Foley's acting career took a turn for the better when played the voice of Filk, the heroic ant protagonist of Disney Pixar's 1998 animated blockbuster, A Bug's Life. Foley has since performed in a slew of hit animated films including It's Tough to Be a Bug (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999) and Cars (2006). He has also done voiceover acting for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999), Lilo & Stich (2003) and Despicable Me (2010). In addition to films, Foley has guest starred on popular TV shows such as King of Queens, Just Shoot Me, Will & Grace and Scrubs.

Personal Life

Dave Foley is also a poker enthusiast, and from 2004-'06 he hosted Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown. Foley recently reunited with The Kids in the Hall to film a revival miniseries, Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town, which aired on CBC in 2010. He married Tabitha Southey in 1991, and the couple had two children, Ned and Basil, before divorcing in 1997. He remarried Crissy Guerrero in 2001, and they had a daugher, Alina Chiara, before also splitting ways in 2008.

After two decades as an international celebrity, the once-introverted child remains modest, self-effacing and somewhat uncomfortable in the spotlight. NewsRadio co-star Phil Hartman said of Foley, "Dave is a very diplomatic and peaceful personality." In fact, Foley says that he feels no different as a celebrity than he did when he was an unknown aspiring comic struggling to land gigs at Toronto nightclubs. "I always assumed that famous people have something about them that made them more recognizable than ordinary people," Foley said. "Now that I am, I guess, a famous person, I realize that, no ... It's just being on television."

© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.

© 2013 A+E Networks. All rights reserved.