1979-present
Who Is Kevin Hart?
Kevin Hart is an actor, comedian, and producer known for his energetic standup comedy and blockbuster movies. The Philadelphia native started working as a standup comic shortly after graduating from high school, eventually migrating to bigger clubs in New York and Los Angeles. He released his first standup special I’m a Grown Little Man in 2009, and his 2011 standup tour Laugh at My Pain grossed $15 million. Since then, Hart has gone on to major Hollywood success, appearing in comedies such as Get Hard (2015), Central Intelligence (2016), and two Jumanji movies, as well as the Emmy-nominated TV series Die Hart. He is the subject of Netflix’s live comedy special The Roast of Kevin Hart airing May 10, 2026.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Kevin Darnell Hart
BORN: July 6, 1979
BIRTHPLACE: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
SPOUSES: Torrei Hart (2003-2011) and Eniko Hart (2016-present)
CHILDREN: Hendrix, Heaven, Kenzo, and Kaori
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer
HEIGHT: 5 feet, 5 inches
Early Life and Career
Kevin Darnell Hart was born on July 6, 1979, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The youngest of two boys, Hart was raised by his mother, Nancy, who took on the role of a single parent as a result of her husband’s chronic battles with cocaine and the law. She died of cancer in 2007.
Throughout much of Hart’s childhood, his father, Henry Hart, was in and out of jail and rarely around. As a coping mechanism, the young Hart found humor to battle back the pain of his childhood. Henry later cleaned up his life, and father and son reconnected. Hart honored his father following his death in 2022. “RIP to one of the realest & rawest to ever do it,” he wrote on Instagram.
The experience of those tough years would later provide a source for much of Hart’s comedy. “The jokes,” he has said of his standup, “come from a real experience.” As a boy, Hart was obsessed with standup comedy and comedians in general, and he listed Chris Tucker and J.B. Smoove as some important influences.
After graduating from high school, Hart moved to New York City and later to Brockton, Massachusetts. But it was back in his hometown of Philadelphia, while working as a shoe salesman, that Hart’s standup career began to blossom.
It was a rough start. For a time, Hart pounded the pavement at a variety of small comedy clubs, working under the stage name of Lil’ Kev the Bastard. Few saw Hart, and those who did, didn’t find him all that funny. “I was trying to be everybody,” he once said. “I was so confused. I didn't know what to do.”
Under the guidance of Keith Robinson, a veteran comedian who began to mentor the younger comic, Hart began performing under his own name and creating material drawn from real-life experiences. Success eventually followed. After winning several amateur standup performances, he began performing regularly in clubs around the country.
Standup Stardom
Hart’s comedy has been compared to the four “Kings of Comedy,” incorporating elements of Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer, D.L. Hughley, and Bernie Mac.
As Hart’s standup career began to take off, ABC handed the young comic his own sitcom, The Big House. Hart played himself on the show, a successful young man who is forced to leave his home in Hawaii and move in with some distant relatives in Philadelphia after getting ensnared in an embezzlement scheme. The outlandish storyline never caught on with audiences, however, and the show was canceled after just six episodes.
Hart rebounded quickly. In 2009, he released his first standup special, I’m a Little Grown Man, which further cemented his status as one of comedy’s best young performers. His second special, Seriously Funny, released four years later, proved to be even bigger.
However, it was 2011’s Laugh at My Pain tour, later turned into a concert documentary, that turned Hart into a full-fledged star. As the title suggests, Hart delved deep into his own personal history for material, from his mother’s death from cancer to the strange behavior of his relatives. His recurring line, “Alright, alright, alright,” quickly became a favorite catchphrase among audiences. In all, Laugh at My Pain encompassed 90 cities and grossed $15 million, making it one of the year’s most successful comedy tours.
Hart’s 2013 standup special Let Me Explain was another commercial success, as was 2016’s What Now?, which received a 2018 Grammy Award nomination for Best Comedy Album. He later followed up with Irresponsible in 2019 and earned another Grammy nod for Zero F**ks Given (2020) before releasing Reality Check in 2023. His latest work, Acting My Age, which arrived on Netflix in 2025, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance in a Standup Comedy Special on Television.
In March 2024, Hart was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor—the highest honor for a comedian.
Movies and TV Shows
Think Like a Man and Ride Along
Hart’s early acting career has spanned a varying list of films, including Paper Soldiers (2002), Scary Movie 3 (2003), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2004), Soul Plane (2004), Little Fockers (2010) and The Five-Year Engagement (2011). But it wasn’t until 2012 that he landed his breakout role in Think Like a Man, in which he played a happily divorced friend. By the time of 2014’s Ride Along, a buddy-cop comedy with Ice Cube that spawned a 2016 sequel, Hart was among the leading comedic actors on the big screen.
Central Intelligence and Jumanji Franchise
Following the romantic comedy About Last Night (2014), Hart led the way in The Wedding Ringer (2015) and co-starred with Will Ferrell in Get Hard (2015) and with Dwayne Johnson in Central Intelligence (2016). He then joined Johnson, Jack Black, and Karen Gillan for the action adventure Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), with the quartet later reuniting for 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level. He is set to appear in Jumanji: Open World in late 2026.
The Secret Life of Pets and The Upside
The actor also offered his voice in animation film projects including The Secret Life of Pets (2016) and its 2019 sequel, as well as Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017) and DC League of Super-Pets (2022). He then co-starred with Tiffany Haddish in the underwhelming comedy Night School (2018), before earning better reviews with his first foray into drama alongside Bryan Cranston in 2019’s The Upside.
The comedian also accepted an invitation in late 2018 to host the Academy Awards, but stepped down from after facing backlash for homophobic comments he made earlier in his standup career.
Die Hart
In 2020, Hart starred in the short-lived Quibi series Die Hart, about a fictionalized version of himself trying to break out of comedy to become an action star. After Quibi shut down, however, the show was acquired by Roku before being refashioned into a 2023 Prime Video movie of the same name, starring John Travolta and Nathalie Emmanuel.
This was soon followed by the 2024 sequel Die Hart 2: Die Harter, based on the second season of the series. Instead of a third movie, the Roku show was renewed for another season, Die Hart 3: Hart to Kill, which premiered in late 2024. In total, the series earned Hart three Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Actor in a Short Form Comedy Series.
Fatherhood and The Man from Toronto
In the midst of filming Die Hart, the actor starred in the 2021 comedy-drama film Fatherhood, about a man who becomes a single father after his wife dies. In 2022, he teamed up with Mark Wahlberg for Me Time before starring in the action comedy The Man From Toronto. Co-starring Woody Harrelson, the film saw Hart as a struggling entrepreneur who gets caught in the crosshairs of an assassin.
Borderlands and Lift
2024 was another busy year for Hart. He played a master thief in Netflix’s heist comedy Lift before starring in the science fiction film Borderlands, based on the video game of the same name. He also appeared in the miniseries Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist with Don Cheadle and Taraji P. Henson.
The Roast of Kevin Hart
Hart is the subject of Netflix’s 2026 live comedy special The Roast of Kevin Hart, hosted by Shane Gillis. Hart previously hosted the Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber in 2015, and also participated in the Comedy Central Roast of Bruce Willis in 2018.
Production Company and Tequila Brand
In addition to acting and standup, Hart is also a producer. He founded the production company Hartbeat Productions in 2009 before later launching the digital comedy network Laugh Out Loud in 2017. He merged the two companies in 2022 to create Hartbeat and has produced a number of movies and TV shows, including FX’s Dave, Die Hart, Funny AF with Kevin Hart, and The Roast of Tom Brady, for which he earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Variety Special in 2024.
Hartbeat also produced his 2020 Netflix documentary series Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up, which gave him another Emmy nod for Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program.
In another business venture, Hart co-founded the Gran Coramino tequila brand in May 2022. By February 2026, Gran Coramino had sold 3.6 million bottles and taken in $200 million in total retail sales.
Wife Eniko Hart and Kids
Hart is married to model Eniko Hart (neé Parrish), with whom he shares two children. The couple met a nightclub in Washington D.C. and soon started dating. They got engaged in 2014, with Kevin proposing to Eniko on her 30th birthday, and tied the knot in California in August 2016.
The following year, Hart became embroiled in a cheating scandal that occurred while his wife was several months pregnant with their first child together. After someone tried to extort him with a video of him and another woman, he publicly apologized for cheating on Eniko in September 2017. Their son Kenzo was born that November. Despite the incident, the couple stayed together and welcomed another child, a daughter named Kaori, in September 2020.
Hart was previously married to actor and comedian Torrei Hart. They wed in 2003 and had two children together. Their daughter Heaven was born in March 2005 and was soon followed by son Hendrix in November 2007. Kevin and Torrei separated in early 2010 before finalizing their divorce in 2011.
Car Accident
In September 2019, Hart was involved in a car accident in Calabasas, California. According to reports, the comedian was a passenger in his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda when the driver, Jared Black, lost control on the notoriously treacherous Mulholland Highway, sending the car off the road and down an embankment. Both were transported to nearby hospitals for treatment, with Hart requiring emergency back surgery.
The comedian appeared in public for the first time following the accident in late October 2019 when he was spotted at a Beverly Hills restaurant with Jay-Z and other friends. The following week, he posted an Instagram video of his rehabilitation exercises, which included reflections on how his perspective on life had changed.
Net Worth
As of April 2026, Hart has an estimated net worth of $400 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. He is one of the richest and highest-paid comedians in the world.
His Hartbeat production company had a valuation of around $650 million as of 2022.
Quotes
- The jokes come from a real experience.
- I don’t like to alienate anybody with my comedy. I don't want to disengage audiences. I want to appeal to everyone and take them minds away from their issues with a lot of laughter. It’s about providing some escape.
- A reputation as a hard worker is a good reputation to have. It’s also about being professional and very loyal to the people who put me here, which would be my fans.
Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn’t look right, contact us!
The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us
Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
