Charlie Day’s Hollywood breakthrough story is a legend among television-industry aspirants. A decade ago, the Rhode Island native shot a pilot with two similarly struggling actors, Rob McElhenney and Glenn Howerton, for about $200 (pizza money included). FX picked up the comedy, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, about a handful of self-involved bar rats and their depraved exploits, was born. On January 14, the series with the underdog inception premieres its 10th season as Day—an executive producer, writer, and star on the show—broadens his acting horizons with recent roles in Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi blockbuster Pacific Rim and in Horrible Bosses 2. On the eve of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s anniversary, the 38-year-old reflects on his jocular journey.
THE SON of a private-school music teacher and a university music professor, Day had a violin in his hand at the age of three, before cycling through the piano, B-flat trombone, and, in an attempt to woo high-school girls, a Bob Dylan–esque guitar-harmonica combo. His older sister (and lone sibling), Alice, has a Ph.D. in music, making him the only family member without a degree in the field.
THOSE MUSIC-MINDED relatives call him Charles, but he’s always preferred Charlie—one of the many nicknames he’s had, including “Charlie Trombone” and “Chuck Hustle.”
CHRISTMAS MORNINGS as a child involved running down the stairs of his family’s tiny blue home, in Middletown, grabbing his Christmas stocking, and . . . jumping into his parents’ 1985 Honda Accord for the six-hour drive to Philadelphia, where his paternal grandmother lived. With no radio in the car, family-sung Christmas carols or sibling quarrels provided the trips’ soundtracks.
THESE DAYS he makes the hour-long commute from his Hollywood Hills home to his Westside office in an Audi Allroad station wagon, which has “radio up the wazoo.” He listens to audiobooks (most recently, Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography) but sometimes misses that 1985 radio-less Accord.
HIS WIFE of eight years, actress Mary Elizabeth Ellis, has a recurring role on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as a waitress whom Day’s character stalks relentlessly.
NEW YORK City’s KGB Bar was the setting of the couple’s first evening together, in December 2001. There, Day arm-wrestled a friend, who was also interested in Ellis, to determine who would talk to her first. Day won.
HIS MORNING alarm is the couple’s three-year-old son, Russell, who was named, in part, for Ellis’s family friend who performed their 2006 wedding ceremony. Day and Ellis married at the Audubon Zoo, in New Orleans, shortly after Hurricane Katrina.
HE WASN’T aware of his gift for comedy until he was voted “Funniest”in eighth grade. It didn’t take him long to embrace the superlative, though: he was voted “Thinks He’s the Funniest” in high school.
COMEDY WAS “a survival mechanism” for Day, who spent his adolescence, when he was “tiny and covered in freckles,” absorbing the works of far-flung funnymen from W. C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen and Chris Farley.
HIS YOUTH centered around baseball and featured recurring dreams in which his childhood hero, M.L.B. outfielder Rickey Henderson, would stop by the local park for a game of catch. One afternoon, exiting Fenway with his friends, Day spotted Henderson and screamed, “Rickey!,” catching his idol’s attention. He could only manage to mumble, “You’re the best.”
WHEN HE didn’t make the baseball team during his freshman year at Merrimack College, in North Andover, Massachusetts, he retired his glove and forged a new identity through acting. He joined the school’s theater club, the Onstagers, followed by an internship at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
DRAMA INTERESTED him as much as comedy before It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and he says he came close to starring in the 2002 Broadway production of The Graduate but lost the role to Jason Biggs.
LIKE HIS It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia character, Day worked as a janitor (at the Waterfront Fitness gym, in Newport) and took great pride in the job. He swears he had “a Legend of Bagger Vance moment” late one night at work, when an older gentleman advised him to clean the windows with newspapers to eliminate streaks. “A day or two later, the owner pulls me aside and says, ‘This gym has never looked this good.’ ”
HIS FAVORITE place to write is on an airplane, with the iPhone 6, which he is admittedly addicted to, powered off and the “trashy” Huffington Post headlines that call his name out of reach.
HIS MOST difficult role to date was in Horrible Bosses, if only because he had to act as though he did not find Jennifer Aniston attractive.
HE’S LEARNED the hard way that a bar is not the most desirable destination for an actor who spends all of his time in one on a popular TV show. “People will want to get drunk with you . . . and I will want to give them the experience they want.”
THE MOST surprising It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia fan he has encountered: Malia Obama. When he met her this past summer, Day asked the 16-year-old to not let her father watch the risqué series. Given that he’s the president, Day added, “He’s too busy anyway.”
