Lance Barber (born June 29, 1973) is an American film and television
actor.Barber was born and raised in Battle Creek, Michigan and began
wanting to be an actor at the age of 7, after seeing a performance of
Grease at the Barn Theatre. He acted at Pennfield High School, from
which he graduated in 1991, and performed in school productions from
Kellogg Community College while earning his associate degree.After a
year at the Barn Theatre, alongside Jennifer Garner, he moved to
Chicago and spent five years working his way up in The Second City
improvisational comedy troupe. He then moved to Los Angeles and had
his first television role in On the Spot, an improv sketch show which
ran for five episodes on The WB in 2003. He credits his breakthrough
to the 2005 HBO series The Comeback with Lisa Kudrow, in which he
played Paulie G., a television writer who he describes as an
"asshole". In 2010, he landed the recurring role of Bill Ponderosa on
FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He reprised his role as Paulie
G. when HBO brought back The Comeback in 2014. He also starred in
episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls, Californication,
Monk, The Mentalist, and Grey's Anatomy.Barber played Jimmy
Speckerman, who bullied Leonard Hofstadter at high school, in one
episode of The Big Bang Theory. He was cast as George Cooper Sr.,
father of Sheldon Cooper, in the spin-off Young Sheldon that premiered
in 2017, and mentioned in an interview that some fans were confused by
his different roles in the two related series. Barber also played
Cooper in "The VCR Illumination", a 2018 episode of the parent show's
twelfth season; the character is deceased in the series but appears on
a video tape that Sheldon unexpectedly watches.
actor.Barber was born and raised in Battle Creek, Michigan and began
wanting to be an actor at the age of 7, after seeing a performance of
Grease at the Barn Theatre. He acted at Pennfield High School, from
which he graduated in 1991, and performed in school productions from
Kellogg Community College while earning his associate degree.After a
year at the Barn Theatre, alongside Jennifer Garner, he moved to
Chicago and spent five years working his way up in The Second City
improvisational comedy troupe. He then moved to Los Angeles and had
his first television role in On the Spot, an improv sketch show which
ran for five episodes on The WB in 2003. He credits his breakthrough
to the 2005 HBO series The Comeback with Lisa Kudrow, in which he
played Paulie G., a television writer who he describes as an
"asshole". In 2010, he landed the recurring role of Bill Ponderosa on
FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He reprised his role as Paulie
G. when HBO brought back The Comeback in 2014. He also starred in
episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Gilmore Girls, Californication,
Monk, The Mentalist, and Grey's Anatomy.Barber played Jimmy
Speckerman, who bullied Leonard Hofstadter at high school, in one
episode of The Big Bang Theory. He was cast as George Cooper Sr.,
father of Sheldon Cooper, in the spin-off Young Sheldon that premiered
in 2017, and mentioned in an interview that some fans were confused by
his different roles in the two related series. Barber also played
Cooper in "The VCR Illumination", a 2018 episode of the parent show's
twelfth season; the character is deceased in the series but appears on
a video tape that Sheldon unexpectedly watches.
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