Early Years

Seth MacFarlane was born in Kent, Conneticut on October 26, 1973. He was born to his father, Ronald MacFarlane and his mother, Perry MacFarlane. He is of Scottish, English, and Welsh ancestry. He studied animation at the Rhode Island School of Design and was hired by Hannah-Barbera as an animator and writer for "Johnny Bravo", "Dexter's Lab", and "Cow and Chicken". After that he went on to work for Walt Disney animation, where he worked on the TV series "Jungle Clubs" and "Ace Ventura". Ace Venture had played a big role for Seth MacFarlane as it would prepare him for all aspects of the animation industry. In 1995 he created "The Life of Larry" which was supposed to be an "in-between" for Mad-TV, but this did not work out. FOX has seen both Seth's work on both "Ace Ventura" and "The Life of Larry" and negotiated with him to start a new prime-time series. The decision was hard for Seth MacFarlane as he enjoyed working at Hannah-Barbara but he knew that a prime-time series was his "call for animation". Seth MacFarlane pitched the idea of "Family Guy" to Hannah-Barbara but it was rejected by the executive producer. After 1997, and the success of Hannah-Barbara's "King of the Hill", Seth McFarlane had pitched Family Guy again to FOX. They had agreed to give Seth MacFarlane $50,000 to create a pilot for "Family Guy". This would mean that Seth MacFarlane would spend the next six months "with no sleep or no life, just drawing like crazy in my kitchen and doing this pilot". FOX had loved the pilot and purchased Family Guy for a January 1999 debut. This would make Seth MacFarlane the world's youngest television executive producer. Little did Seth MacFarlane know the enormous success that would amount to be worth over $1,000,000,000.