Adam Savage

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Adam Savage bigraphy, stories - American television presenter, special effects artist

Adam Savage : biography

15 July 1967 –

Adam Whitney Savage (born July 15, 1967) is an American industrial design and special effects designer/fabricator, actor, educator, and co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters and Unchained Reaction. His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and The Matrix Reloaded. He is a prominent member of the skeptic community. He lives in San Francisco with his twin sons and wife, Julia.

Personal life

Savage and his wife Julia were married in 2002. He has twin sons from a previous relationship, and wears a hearing aid on his left ear due to a congenital condition and is a practiced juggler, as seen on Mythbusters. Savage is also an atheist. In addition, Savage has a lifelong interest in costume making. He said, "I remember my mom getting me a ‘Jaws’ costume when ‘Jaws’ came out…and wearing a Batman costume. Back then, everyone dressed up as hobos." He strives for authenticity with his costumes. While in high school, he and his father made a suit of armor out of aluminum roof flashing that had 700 rivets. He said, "I wore it to school and passed out from heat exhaustion in math class. I woke up in the nurse’s office and the first thing I said was ‘Where’s my armor’?" In 2011, he built a costume based on the character No-Face from the film Spirited Away. In early 2012, it was announced that he would be the commencement speaker at Sarah Lawrence College.http://www.slc.edu/news-events/news/2012-03-14-commencement-speaker-adam-savage-nr.html

Early life and education

Born in New York City, Savage was raised in Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County New York. He graduated from Sleepy Hollow High School in 1985. His father, Whitney Lee Savage (1928-1998), was a painter, filmmaker and animator known for his work on Sesame Street, and has a permanent exhibit in the Avampato Discovery Museum. His mother is a psychotherapist. His sister Kate Savage is also an artist. As a teenager in Sleepy Hollow, he routinely visited the local bike shop to have flat tires fixed. The shop showed him how to do the repairs himself. From this experience, Savage said, "I realized you could take a bike apart and put it back together and it wasn’t that hard…I’ve been building and putting bicycles together since then."

Adam Savage began acting as a child, and has had five years of acting school. His early credits include voicing animated characters that his father produced for Sesame Street, Mr. Whipple’s stock boy "Jimmy" in a Charmin commercial, a helper in the special effects of Star Wars, and a drowning young man saved by a lifeguard in the 1985 Billy Joel music video "You’re Only Human (Second Wind)."

Describing the early abandonment of his acting career, Savage said "…by the time I was, I guess probably nineteen, I had passed on that in favor of doing stuff with my hands – graphic design, assistant animation in New York, and then eventually working in theater in San Francisco, and film special effects. Then MythBusters came along and it was the perfect marriage of two things, performance and special effects." On November 25, 2011, Savage received an honorary doctorate from the University of Twente (Enschede, Netherlands) for his role in the popularization of science and technology. – website of the University of Twente – website EenVandaag (Dutch)

MythBusters

Savage has been involved in MythBusters since its creation. His role in the show (that he shares with all the other talent) is to either disprove ("bust") myths or confirm them through testing and experiments done at different scales. If the myth is about a one-time occurrence and not about whether or not something can happen at all, it is often deemed "plausible" instead.

Savage’s demeanour on MythBusters is animated and energetic, providing a foil to Jamie Hyneman’s more reserved straight man persona.