Adam Savage

This is the latest accepted revision, accepted on 29 August 2010.

Adam Savage
Born	Adam Whitney Savage 1 July 15, 1967 (1967-07-15) (age 43) New York City, New York, US
Occupation	MythBusters co-host, Designer/fabricator, actor, educator
Website Official website

Adam Whitney Savage (born July 15, 1967) is an American industrial design and special effects designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters.¹

Early life and education

Born in New York City, Savage was raised in Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County.² His father, W. Lee Savage, was a painter, filmmaker, and animator known for his work on Sesame Street. His mother is a psychotherapist. His sister Kate Savage is also an artist.

Adam Savage began acting as a child, and has had five years of acting school.¹ His early credits include voicing animated characters that his father produced for Sesame Street, Mr. Whipple's stock boy "Jimmy" in a Charmin commercial, a helper in the special effects of Star Wars, and a drowning young man saved by a lifeguard in the 1985 Billy Joel music video "You're Only Human (Second Wind)."³ He attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts for acting for 6 months before dropping out.⁴

Describing the early abandonment of his acting career, Savage said "...by the time I was, I guess probably nineteen, I had passed on that in favor of doing stuff with my hands – graphic design, assistant animation in New York, and then eventually working in theater in San Francisco, and film special effects. Then MythBusters came along and it was the perfect marriage of two things, performance and special effects."⁵

Career

Savage has worked as an animator, graphic designer, carpenter, projectionist, film developer, television presenter, set designer, toy designer, and gallery owner. He worked as a model maker on the films Galaxy Quest, Bicentennial Man, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, The Matrix Reloaded and Space Cowboys, among others.

Savage played the role of a helpful engineer in the film Ever Since the World Ended⁶ and the role of an army surplus store owner who sells a man a rocket engine for his pickup truck in The Darwin Awards, which also featured MythBusters co-star Jamie Hyneman.⁷ He made a cameo appearance along with Jamie Hyneman on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on the May 1, 2008 episode "The Theory of Everything." In the "making of" material for The Matrix Revolutions, he appears in his role as a special effects artist and discusses some of the miniature effects used and the difficulties involved.

He previously taught advanced model making in the department of Industrial Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.¹

Savage has become a regular presenter at magician James Randi's annual skeptics' conference, The Amaz!ng Meeting since first appearing in January 2006.⁸ He also appeared in the UK, giving a talk at the first Amazing Meeting London from 3–4 October 2009, hosted at the Mermaid Conference Centre, Blackfriars.⁹

Savage was a featured performer at the three w00tstock v1.x shows in 2009, and is scheduled to appear in four w00tstock v2.x shows in 2010. He also appeared as a guest on Diggnation's 220th show.¹⁰

Savage has also been a regular guest speaker at the annual Maker Faire since 2008, speaking on different topics such as his obsession with the dodo bird and problem solving, and also taking questions from the audience members about the Mythbusters and other things.

MythBusters

This section requires expansion.

Savage has been involved in MythBusters since its creation. His role in the show (that he shares with all the other talent) is to either disprove or "bust" myths or confirm them through a series of different scales of tests and experiments. If the myth is about a one time occurrence and not about whether or not something can happen at all, it is often deemed plausible instead.

Savage's demeanour on MythBusters is animated and energetic, providing a foil to Jamie Hyneman's more reserved straight man persona.¹¹

Savage and Hyneman were the only hosts of the show for the first season of Mythbusters, but starting with the second season, members of Hyneman's staff were introduced and began to appear regularly in episodes; Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and welder Scottie Chapman appeared in the second season. In the third season, Chapman was replaced by Grant Imahara, a robot builder and model maker.

In an interview Savage gave during The Amaz!ng Meeting 5, he expressed an interest in proving natural selection over creationism on MythBusters.

Savage also stated that such an episode is unlikely because MythBusters has a policy against trying to disprove supernatural phenomena.¹³

Personal life

Savage and his current wife Julia were married in 2002. He has twin sons from a previous relationship (as referred to during his participation in a podcast from Chris Hardwick's Nerdist site).¹⁴ He wears a hearing aid on his left ear due to a congenital condition.¹⁵ He is a practiced juggler, as seen on Mythbusters. He is also an atheist.¹⁶

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Adam Savage

• Adam Savage's personal website
• Adam Savage at the Internet Movie Database
• Adam Savage on Twitter
• Adam Savage's biography from the Discovery Channel
• Interview with Adam at The Sneeze
• Interview with Adam from Reddit.com
• Adam Savage interviewed on Penn Radio
• Adam talks about his newfound fame
• Savage Presentation at The Entertainment Gathering (December 2008)
• Adam Savage on Diggnation (September 2009)