Steven Alexander Wright (born December 6, 1955) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and film producer.

He is known for his distinctive lethargic voice and slow, deadpan delivery of ironic, philosophical and sometimes nonsensical jokes, paraprosdokians, non sequiturs, anti-humor, and one-liners with contrived situations.

[10] Wright's father worked as an electronics technician who "tested a lot of stuff" for NASA during the Apollo spacecraft program.

[14] In 1982, Peter Lassally, executive producer of NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, saw Wright performing on a bill with other local comics at the Ding Ho comedy club in Cambridge, a venue Wright described as "half Chinese restaurant and half comedy club.

The album's success landed him an HBO special, in the On Location: series, taped at Wolfgang's in San Francisco.

The performance became one of HBO's longest-running and most requested comedy specials and propelled him to great success on the college-arena concert circuit.

He also supplied the voice of the radio DJ in writer-director Quentin Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs that year.

"[17] After his 1990 comedy special Wicker Chairs and Gravity, Wright continued to do stand-up performances, but these were largely absent from television, and he only occasionally made guest spots on late-night talk shows.

"[5] In May 2000, Wright and other Ding Ho alumni, including Lenny Clarke, Barry Crimmins, Steve Sweeney, Bill Sohonage and Jimmy Tingle, appeared at a reunion benefit for comic Bob Lazarus, who was diagnosed with leukemia.

[19][20] Wright was awarded an Oscar in 1989 for Best Short Live-Action Film for The Appointments of Dennis Jennings, which he co-wrote (with Michael Armstrong) and starred in.