Matt Besser

Matt Besser is an American actor, comedian, writer and director who grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and began performing stand-up before he took improv classes in Chicago. He helped found the Upright Citizens Brigade, a sketch group that started in Chicago in 1990 and relocated to New York City in 1996, and he starred alongside Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts and Matt Walsh in the troupe's Comedy Central series, which ran from 1998 to 2000. His film work includes Junebug (2005), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), Undead or Alive (2007) and Wild Girls Gone (2007). On television he played morning DJ Crazy Ira on Parks and Recreation from 2011 to 2014. Since 2011 he has hosted the podcast Improv4humans, and he also wrote and directed Freak Dance, a film drawn from his UCB stage show.