Dan Finnerty

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Dan Finnerty (born January 22, 1970) is an American actor and singer.

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Early and personal life

Finnerty was born in Rochester, New York, and grew up in the small town of Bath, New York. He attended Emerson College in Boston. He was a member of the hit off-Broadway show Stomp in New York City. In August 1998, he married actress Kathy Najimy. Gloria Steinem officiated the ceremony. The couple has one daughter, Samia Najimy Finnerty, born December 1996.

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Career

He created and is the lead singer of the cult hit group The Dan Band. His show, Dan Finnerty & The Dan Band: I Am Woman, was filmed as a one-hour concert special on Cable TV's Bravo channel, directed by McG and executive produced by Steven Spielberg.

Finnerty is best known for his foul-mouthed rendition of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as the wedding singer at Will Ferrell's wedding in the movie Old School, directed by Todd Phillips, who continued to feature Dan, using him as the sleazy bat-mitzvah singer in Starsky & Hutch and again as the irreverent wedding singer in The Hangover. After seeing The Dan Band, Steven Spielberg cast him in The Terminal. Finnerty has also been seen in the films "The Wedding Planner" and Rock of Ages and originated the role of Lonny in the world premiere of "Rock of Ages" in Los Angeles.

He was a recurring comedy correspondent on "The Jay Leno Show" and continued onto The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

He has released 3 albums. The Dan Band Live, the full-length CD of his live show, which Entertainment Weekly dubbed "the hottest ticket in Hollywood." As well as the comedy holiday album entitled: Ho: A Dan Band Xmas. The album consists completely of original Dan Band songs. Songs on the album include "Ho, Ho, Ho" (a smooth R&B Christmas song about a prostitute) "Merry Christmakwanzakah," "Please Don't Bomb Nobody This Holiday," and "I Wanna Rock U Hard This Christmas" whose video featured Florence Henderson from The Brady Bunch making the moves on Santa at a retirement home.

The video for "Please Don't Bomb Nobody This Holiday" featured many celebrity cameos, including Sheryl Crow, Christina Applegate, Nicole Scherzinger, Kyle Gass from Tenacious D, Neil Patrick Harris, Meg Ryan, Macy Gray, Christopher Guest, among others.

The Dan Band appeared numerous times as the house band on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Pajama Party, and Spike TV's Spike Guys' Choice Awards 2009, and wrote and performed the finale song for the final season of Last Comic Standing as well as many appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Late Late Show and Last Call with Carson Daly'. He has guest-starred on numerous television shows and he voiced Wallow in Random! Cartoons and the singing Prince in The Princess and the Pea.

His newest album "The Wedding Album" was released in 2015 and includes collaborations with Nicole Scherzinger, Rob Thomas, Bridget Everett, Nuno Bettencourt and TRAIN.

In March 2017, AT&T announced that Finnerty would appear in advertisements for DIRECTV during March Madness, co-starring with Greg Gumbel. The spots feature Finnerty performing the Aerosmith song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing", with lyrics tailored to each scene (generally people at work while tournament games are on).