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= Jake Di Pasquale = Jake Andrew Di Pasquale (born September 16, 1971) is an American actor, comedian, and producer who is most well-known for his crude humor, offensive jokes and skits, and method acting techniques. The Rolling Stone ranked him as "the most offensive comedian the public has ever seen" and "the most offensive comedian of 2020." He initially went viral after a skit of him portraying the 35th U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, riding a horse and screaming racial slurs on Broadway, premiered on Saturday Night Live in late 1991. While Di Pasquale still performs stand-up and improv regularly, he is also an actor who has appeared in over 50 American films, most famously in Pulp Fiction as Johnny Romero and in The Matrix as Carlos Estes.

Early Life
Jake Di Pasquale was born Jake Andrew Di Pasquale on September 16, 1971 in Brookline, Massachusetts, to an Italian-American father, Hank, an alcoholic who formerly worked as an electrician and repairman, and an Irish-American mother of partial African-American ancestry, Rose (née Hanrahan), an accountant; Rose's paternal grandparents emigrated from Ballina, County Mayo, while her mother was half Irish from County Cork, and half African-American from Kentucky. Despite being 3/8 Irish and 1/8 black, Di Pasquale identifies with his father's Italian roots and has traveled to Italy on three occasions, mostly to Nocera Inferiore, where his father's parents were born. Di Pasquale has also stated during stand-up routines that his father Hank had "Arab roots."

In interviews about his early life, Di Pasquale has said he was an only child that had a "rough childhood" and that his father would beat him and his mother after getting drunk. Di Pasquale would often cope with the abuse by using humor, which, according to him, is the source of his rather offensive material, and still considers comedy to be his self-proclaimed "safe space." His mother Rose divorced Hank in 1974 and Di Pasquale moved with his mother to Valley Stream, New York, where they lived for 5 years. However, in 1979, Rose's stepfather, Mike, was struggling with complications from asthma in Portland, Oregon, where Mike had moved from Brookline for work, and Di Pasquale and his mother relocated to live with Mike and his son, James. After Mike passed away in mid-1982, the family (Jake, Rose, and James) purchased a new home in Tualatin, Oregon, where the family finally settled.

Career Beginnings
Soon after his 18th birthday in 1989, Di Pasquale moved to Redding, California, traveling by car in his 1985 Toyota Corolla. Initially, Di Pasquale worked as a freelance graphic designer and artist to make ends meet. However, the income he was receiving was only enough to cover his rent in a studio apartment. After quitting his freelance work, Di Pasquale worked a number of odd jobs, such as washing dishes at local restaurants, spinning signs for various companies, working as a janitor at Enterprise High School, and assembling ice cream machines for Dairy Queen.

Eventually, Di Pasquale found that he had enough money to support himself and moved into a 2-bedroom apartment in the Alta Mesa neighborhood of Redding in late 1990. While working as a cashier at Starbucks for extra money, he met Eileen "Aye" Richards, a stand-up comedian, poet, and native of Redding who frequently performed at local comedy clubs, bars, and lounges. They started spending time together, and Di Pasquale developed feelings for Eileen, which led to them moving in together and being in a romantic relationship that is still ongoing as of 2021. Di Pasquale states that Eileen is "one of his biggest influences" and that he "wouldn't be the same today without her."

After finding his newfound passion, Di Pasquale started accepting gigs at local dive bars and pubs, eventually amassing a group resembling that of a fanbase. In a 2010 interview, Di Pasquale remarked that his sense of humor was fairly lighter and less offensive in the beginning of his career. Occasionally, he would perform alongside Eileen, however, he mostly performed solo.

Comedic success and JFK Skit (1991-1994)
During the autumn of 1991, Di Pasquale was contacted by Lorne Michaels of Saturday Night Live (SNL), after seeing him in a news article based in San Francisco. Michaels wanted him to perform an absurd skit on the show, intended to shock the viewers. Di Pasquale flew out to New York City and collaborated with Ron Howard and Michaels; after a few hours, the trio thought of a skit in which Di Pasquale would portray the 35th president, John F. Kennedy, riding a horse along Broadway and screaming profanities and racial slurs. The skit was written, filmed, and edited within 48 hours of the idea. It premiered on SNL on October 22, 1991 and initially received positive feedback, due in part to the censorship of the racial slurs present in the film. An uncensored and uncut version was released in 2011, 20 years later, but didn't receive as much attention and was held unfavorably by those who had seen it.

Starting in early 1992, Di Pasquale repeatedly gained more fame and attention, from occasional appearances in SNL to his own stand-up routines; most of his gigs were originally within California, however he did start traveling around the rest of the U.S. and the rest of the world later that year. A few comedians, such as Bill Burr, looked up to Di Pasquale and saw him as an inspiration to start performing their own routines. Many of Di Pasquale's early jokes were centered around his Italian ancestry, his father's alcoholism, his trivial everyday issues with his then-fiancée Eileen, and his old jobs before comedy.