"Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting. But you can go from acting to being a TV personality to being a radio personality to being a writer to being a producer, to just being a visionary, to voiceover work."
Kevin Darnell Hart (born July 6, 1979) is an American comedian and actor from Philadelphia. He got his first major role as CJ in Scary Movie 3 in 2003 and went on to star in the movie Soul Plane. He has since starred in many movies, at first as a One-Scene Wonder then increasingly in leading roles. His stand-up comedy routines are often based on his children's antics and his height. His tour Laugh at My Pain tour (also shown in theaters) made him the first African-American comic to surpass $1.1 million in ticket sales, also making it one of the most successful selling comedy concerts in history. He currently stars in the BET series The Real Husbands of Hollywood, where he plays a heavily Flanderized version of himself, as well as What the Fit where he explores healthy lifestyle techniques with a different Special Guest each week.
Filmography:
- Scary Movie series (2003-2006)
- Soul Plane (2004)
- Epic Movie (2007)
- Superhero Movie (2008)
- Extreme Movie (2008)
- Fool's Gold (2008)
- Not Easily Broken (2009)
- Death at a Funeral (2010)
- Little Fockers (2010)
- The Five-Year Engagement (2012)
- Think Like a Man (2012)
- This Is the End (2013)
- Ride Along (2014) and Ride Along 2 (2016)
- About Last Night... (2014)
- Think Like a Man Too (2014)
- The Wedding Ringer (2015)
- Get Hard (2015)
- Central Intelligence (2016)
- The Secret Life of Pets (2016)
- Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017)
- Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
- Night School (2018)
- The Upside (2019)
- Jumanji: The Next Level (2019)
- Die Hart (2020)
- Fatherhood (2021)
- DC League of Super-Pets (2022)
- MeTime (2022)
- Lift (2024)
- The Masked Singer (2024)
- Borderlands (2024)
Tropes:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: His drug-addicted dad would show up at school events in sweat pants and without underwear.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Discussed in Let Me Explain. Kevin says that if you're a woman accusing your man of cheating, you don't want to hear him say "Are you done?" during the argument. If your man says that, then not only are you wrong about him cheating, but he's also about to tear your argument to pieces. Kevin calls it "the one-percent of the time you're wrong [that] men live for".
- Black Comedy: His jokes about his drug-addicted dad, who never wore underwear. Not only does it include jokes about his dad being gross, but it also includes discussing drug addiction, theft, and threatening people.
- Brick Joke: Often, in his comedy shows, he'll come up with a Running Gag early on that is repeated a few times, then not mention it until near the end of the show. In Laugh at My Pain, he mentions early on that explaining your financial situation (like saying "the way that my bank account is set up") is a sure sign that you're not going to be able to pay for something. To close the show, Kevin mentions "the way that my bank account is set up" when he's forced to pay for broken bottles of liquor.
- Butt-Monkey: What the Fit can sometimes lead to scenes like this.
- Cassandra Truth: Discussed in What Now? where he passed out after getting drunk at his friend's house playing ping-pong. After waking up the next morning, Kevin realized he had to make something up to tell his girlfriend, because there was no way she would believe he spent the night playing ping-pong, even though that's exactly what happened.
- Catchphrase: Apparently, his dad had a tendency to go "ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIIIIGHT!", even during spelling bees. Kevin eventually made it into a Running Gag, and fully admitted that he was hoping that his audience members would be saying it for no reason at all.
- Conspicuous Consumption: Discusses how he can't do that, since he doesn't have as much money as his athlete and actor friends, one of which actually rented out an amusement park for his kid's birthday.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: He shares this trait with Christopher Titus, including one notable relationship with an older woman that had him paranoid during his next relationshipnote .Hart: Ever argue with a female and, in the middle of the argument, you no longer feel safe because of her actions? She may start pacing back and forth real fast, breathing out her nose. You know what my girl do? When she get mad, she start talking in the third person. That's scary as hell because that's her way of telling me that from this point on, she is not responsible for none of her actions.
- Family Disunion: His mother's funeral caused a bit of this between Kevin and his more eccentric relatives, like his cousin Al, who wouldn't shut up about Jesus and had a very bizarre tribute to Kevin's mom.
- Height Insult:
- He gets to hear lots of remarks about his height throughout his career, but in one The Graham Norton Show interview, Dwayne Johnson asks him how is it like being 3'2 then imitates him having to look up at fans when they spot him outside.
- In another interview with Dwayne, Kevin bluntly says "tall people are stupid" while laughing.
- Holier Than Thou: His cousin Al, a former drug addict who found Jesus. The trouble is that Al simply won't shut up about it, to the point that it really gets on Kevin's nerves.(in response to "Good morning") Uh, it is a good morning, because Jesus woke us up. Hello! Boom! I love Him, do you?
- Insistent Terminology: When people were bothered about his father not wearing underwear, making his penis quite visible, his response to it would often be something along the lines of "IT'S NOT A PENIS! IT'S A LONG DICK!"
- Large Ham: If his screaming didn't make it obvious, he can really let loose.
- Miles Gloriosus: He admits as much. A common theme throughout his stand-up specials is that Kevin wants to be seen as a tough and confident badass, but backs down almost instantly in the face of any real danger.
- When a former inmate fresh out of parole was hired by Kevin to play Sponge Bob Squarepants, Kevin warned him not to smoke until the parolee threatened him, at which point Kevin made a few Verbal Backspaces.
- Kevin and his friend once messed with an ostrich, until they found out that the ostrich could catch up with their car, at which point Kevin started screaming in fear at the agitated "man-pigeon".
- Mistaken for Cheating: He describes how he never went for a walk and fed pigeons when he was married because his wife would think that he was lying about feeding pigeons and was cheating. In another instance, he describes a crazy girl who assumed he was cheating, and after hearing her "evidence" describes a long story involving an explanation for all the "evidence" (including the fact that said girl was drunk the night before and forgot most of what happened).
- Milking the Giant Cow: Mocked when he talks about how to be a singer:All you need to know how to do is open your hands, close 'em, and point.
- Mood-Swinger: Discusses women who do this:Have you ever seen a woman go from frantic to calm, real fast? "MOTHAFUCKA YOU A PIECE OF SHIT. I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU HURTIN ME LIKE THIS. (Creepy Monotone) But it's gon' be the last time that you do some shit to me. (Suddenly Shouting) I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT IT, I DON'T GIVE A FUCK! (Creepy Monotone again) But let me tell you something nigga, you gon' get your shit together or GET THE FUCK OUT!"
- The Napoleon: Hart has quite a short stature for his gender, at about 5'4"/165cm. Several of his routines, such as one about riding a horse, have Kevin undergo some Self-Deprecation about how short he is.
- The New '10s: When he reached mainstream prominence and when he was in his prime.
- Those Two Actors: He tends to appear alongside Dwayne Johnson in feature films, such as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.
- N-Word Privileges: He talks about how he got a ghetto SpongeBob for his daughter's party who played "Duck Duck Nigga" with the kids. The white kid there refused to play because he felt the other kids would look at him as if he was the one saying the word.
- Oh, Crap!: Twice involving his friend Harry. One time, he comes back to his house drunk after cheating on his girlfriend and his girlfriend confronts him about it. He calls Harry, expecting him to make up an alibi. Instead Harry says, "You was with that bitch with the fat ass." Another time, he is in the car when Harry calls and the phone is on speaker. Now, Harry invented the code "I'm hungry as shit" to signal that their girlfriends were in the room, so don't say anything dumb. Harry however completely forgets the code and when Kevin says it, he responds "That must mean you ready to eat these WHITE BITCHES!"
- Piss-Take Rap: Hart talks about how he can't rap because of his high-pitched voice, in one of his comedy specials:(high pitched voice) "Yeah, bitch, I'm a killer, I shoot you in your face. (makes finger guns) Pshoom, Pshoom, Everybody gon' die. Pshoom pshoom, everybody gon' die tonight." Did he just say "Pshoom, pshoom"? I'm not buying that shit if he said "pshoom, pshoom".
- Screams Like a Little Girl: Pulls this off easily in both his stand-up performances and movies, like the "Pineapples" sequence in Laugh at My Pain.
- Scully Box: Inverted in the Scary Movie series, when Hart had to stand in a trench in order to be slightly shorter than the other actors, since his character is short. Since Hart stands 5 feet 4½ inches tall, it seems that he frequently employs this device, rather than subverting it as he did in this movie.
- Self-Deprecation: His comedy frequently utilizes this.
- He frequently mentions about how much of "an asshole" he is, such as being willing to push a woman back in the water if she escaped from a shark attack.
- Kevin will frequently make fun of himself for how short he is, with at least one set per comedy show making fun of his shortness.
- He also makes fun of his self-admitted tendency to act like a confident badass until real danger shows up, at which point he instantly backs down.
- One episode of The Real Husbands has Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Anderson making fun of his role in Soul Plane.
- Star-Derailing Role: Soul Plane was supposed to be the film that put Kevin on the map. In fact, it was extremely popular and everyone who saw it praised his performance in it. Unfortunately, the film was leaked before its release and very heavily pirated (so much so that it's included in many "Most Pirated Movies" lists) and the studio didn't make any money from it, so the major film roles quickly dried up for Kevin. He stuck to working in stand-up for several years before his profile rose to point where studios were practically begging him to star in their movies.
- Star-Making Role: Though he wasn't the lead, his role as Cedric in 2012's Think Like a Man was Kevin's biggest role in a film since Soul Plane and he ended up stealing the show.
- Suddenly Shouting: "My Mom told me to tell you... to mind your DAAAAAMN MOTHAFUCKIN' BUSINESS, BITCH!"
- Talkative Loon: His uncle Richard Jr., who just got out of prison and is the originator of several memes from Kevin's act by being such a Cloud Cuckoolander.
- Tears of Fear: Hart admitted to getting "emotional" when he and his friend were being chased by an ostrich — which kept pace with their car going 60 mph.
- Too Much Information: When his cousin Al offhandedly mentions how he (and Kevin's father, apparently) used to give oral sex for drug money.
- Wham Line: Discussed in Let Me Explain. Kev says that, if you're a woman accusing your man of being unfaithful or doing something stupid, you never want to hear him say "Are you done?" Because if you hear that, it means you're about to hear him tear into you, and he's been waiting to do it.
- What Could Have Been: He originally auditioned for Saturday Night Live in the early 2000s, but was rejected because of his poor celebrity impressions. He also was a potential cast member for Tower Heist.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Going by this TV appearance, it pretty much applies to all animals.
