Paul Reubens is an American actor, comedian, writer, producer, and children’s entertainer. He was born in Rubenfeld, New York, on August 27, 1952. People know him for playing Pee-wee Herman.
In the 1970s, Reubens joined the group The Groundlings in Los Angeles. This was the start of his career as a stand-up comedian and stage actor.
Early Life of Pee Wee Herman
In 1982, Reubens started playing a character on TV that he had been working on for years. The show was called The Pee-wee Herman Show, and it ran for five sold-out months.
HBO also made a successful special about it. Pee-wee became a cult figure right away, and for the next ten years, Paul Reubens did all of his public appearances and interviews as Pee-wee.
Tim Burton’s 1985 movie Pee-Big wee’s Adventure, which he wrote and starred in, was a financial and critical success and quickly became a cult film. Big Top Pee-wee, which came out in 1988, was not as popular. Reubens played Pee-wee on the CBS Saturday morning children’s show Pee-Playhouse wee’s from 1986 to 1990.
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His Career was Stopped by a Scandal.
In July 1991, when Reubens was at the top of his fame as Pee-wee, he almost lost his job. An undercover cop arrested the performer at an adult movie theater in Sarasota, Florida, and charged him with being rude.
Reruns of Pee-Playhouse wee’s were taken off the air almost immediately. The show had already ended, but CBS pulled it out of syndication because of the arrest. Pee-wee dolls were also taken off the shelves.
Rubens was given community service after pleading guilty to the charges, but his reputation was already hurt. He became a joke on late-night talk shows, and despite support from celebrities like Cyndi Lauper (who sang the Playhouse theme song) and the public, the actor and comedian withdrew from the public eye and refused to talk about his arrest in interviews.
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He came back to show business as a character actor.
During the 1990s, Reubens stayed out of the spotlight and played small parts in movies like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Batman Returns, Matilda, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. He was praised by critics for his role as the journalist’s secretary on the hit sitcom Murphy Brown, which starred Candice Bergen.
In 1995, Reubens was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor, for which he was in six episodes.
He seemed to get past the scandal by the end of the decade when he got a part in the superhero spoof Mystery Men and went on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno to promote it. In 2001, he hosted the short-lived game show You Don’t Know Jack and won praise for his role as a flashy drug dealer in Johnny Depp’s crime drama Blow.
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He Was Picked Up For the Second Time.
Just as Reubens’s career seemed to be getting better, he was arrested again in 2002 and charged with misdemeanor possession of obscene material. The actor said that the charges were based on a few wrongly labeled pictures from his large collection of old erotica and bodybuilding magazines.
He admitted to being guilty, but he said the material was safe.
“I wasn’t really thinking, “Wow, this is all the weird and creepy stuff I shouldn’t be collecting.” It isn’t exciting, “In 2004, he told NBC News. “There are many things you can say about me. You might even. People might think I’m strange.
They might think I’m crazy or whatever else they want to think. It’s all good. So long as one of the things you don’t think about me is that I like to hurt children. Since that isn’t true.”
He Has Kept Working Steady Jobs In Television.
Even though he had problems with the law, Reubens kept working. He had guest roles on shows like Reno 911!, 30 Rock, Pushing Daisies, The Blacklist, and Dirt all through the 2000s.
He has also become a regular voice actor, giving voices to characters in movies like The Smurfs and TV shows like Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Adventure Time, Kung-Fu Panda, Star Wars Rebels, American Dad, Voltron, and others. He has also used his voice in video games like Call of Duty and Minecraft.
He has recently been on Gotham, The Conners, and What We Do in the Shadows, and he has also been on Celebrity Family Feud and Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.