Tiffany Haddish, in full Tiffany Sarac Haddish, (born December 3, 1979, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), American comedian who was known for her unflinching candour and disarming authenticity. She shot to stardom with her no-holds-barred performance as Dina in the raunchy comedy Girls Trip (2017).
Haddish’s father, who was Eritrean, left the family when she was still a toddler. After her mother suffered brain damage in a car accident, Haddish spent several years in foster care before going to live with her grandmother as a teenager. Her penchant for making her classmates laugh led her social worker to point her toward the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp, a free summer program offered by the comedy club chain Laugh Factory to teach underprivileged children how to perform stand-up comedy. The camp proved to be a transformative experience for Haddish.
After graduating from high school, Haddish focused on forging a career in comedy, using her life as source material. Although she made headway, she earned so little money that at times she was forced to live in her car. Her first big break came in 2006 when she was a contestant on the television comedy competition show Who’s Got Jokes? Two years later she appeared on Def Comedy Jam and the reality-show spoof Reality Bites Back. During this time, Haddish began to be cast in a number of sitcoms, and she also acted in such films as the comedies Meet the Spartans (2008) and The Janky Promoters (2009), which was written by and starred rapper and actor Ice Cube.
Haddish’s credits from 2019 included the comedy special Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History, the animated feature The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, and the mob drama The Kitchen. That year she emceed the comedy special Tiffany Haddish Presents: They Ready; was cast as the host of the updated TV show Kids Say the Darndest Things; and did the stand-up comedy special Black Mitzvah, which was subsequently adapted into a Grammy Award-winning comedy album. In 2020 Haddish starred in the movie Like a Boss, a comedy about two friends who create a cosmetics company, and appeared in the Netflix miniseries Self Made, which was inspired by the life of pioneering businesswoman Madam C.J. Walker (played by Octavia Spencer). Her films from 2021 included the comedy Bad Trip and Billy Crystal’s Here Today, in which she played a singer who forms a friendship with a comedy writer in the early stages of dementia.
