The man that would one day become Pee-Wee Herman was born Paul Reubenfeld on August 27, 1952 in Peekskill, New York.

His family moved to Florida, where he would join the local Sarasota Asola Theater at age 11. He was in many plays there. Later his parents moved to Hollywood, where they ran a store. Paul graduated from the California Institute of the Arts as an acting major.













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A struggling comedian in the late '70s, Paul joined a comedy troupe called the Groundlings. The name was a reference to Hamlet, where Shakespeare refers to the poorer members of the audience in Elizabethan times. He also legally changed his last name to Reubens, because he preferred it as a stage name.

Pee-Wee Herman, a quirky bow-tied man-child, debuted in 1978. The character was inspired by a boy Reubens met in camp when he was younger. His voice was modeled after a role he played as a child actor. Pee-Wee was able to get gigs in many clubs that would not hire Reubens.

Reubens was also in a number of films in the early '80s, including Cheech and Chong's Next Movie, where he is a hotel clerk and appears as Pee-wee, Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams, where he is a coke-snorting psycho "Hamburger Man," and he was Pinocchio in the Faerie Tale Theater production.