You probably best know him as Ray Barone's older brother Robert on "Everybody Loves Raymond," but Brad Garrett has been performing comedy way before the hit CBS sitcom began sucking TV viewing audiences to their tubes every Monday night for nine years.
In a recent interview, Garrett stated that he just "always kind of fell into it," referring to his undeniable knack for cracking up people from early on. During his school days, he demonstrated that he already was heading down the comedy trail, roasting his teachers and doing impressions of his principal to amuse his fellow students.
"I don't think that people ever decide to go into comedy. Without sounding corny, I think it's just something that's such an odd profession, that it almost finds you."
Already 6 feet tall by the time he became a teen, Garrett hooked up his first comedy gig at only 14, opening for a band called Monkey Vomit at the Turkey Farm in Tarzana, Calif., which has since closed. "In those days, my name was Gerstenfeld, and it actually said on the marquee, 'Brad Gerstenfeld Open for Lunch.' It almost looked like a gentlemen's club for giants, is I guess how you could put it -- I don't think anyone should be open for lunch, I don't care who you are. So that was my foray into stand-up."