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Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, the third child in a family of four, he began his television career on the local program "Frank Edwards Presents" at the age of five, and his stage career as a mechanical toy in the Royal Danish Ballet at the age of seven. While still a child, his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he studied acting and writing at the Actors and Writers Workshop under Walter Roberts, Eric and Julia Roberts' father. By high school, his family had moved again, this time to the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, where he would have his first experiences performing Shakespeare.
However, his real passion was comedy. So, still in his teens, he started hanging out in the back of The Improv comedy club in New York (on Thursdays when there was no cover) and doing stand-up of his own at any and every venue that would allow a baby face to perform. In college, he studied Radio, Television and Film at Temple University in Philadelphia. In his junior year, he won a scholarship to study abroad in Rome, Italy. This was a major turning point in his life. Arriving in Rome with two hundred dollars in travelers checks, within a year he went from starving foreign student to international television phenomenon.
Two hundred dollars wasn't much, even back then. So, in addition to a full academic work load at the university, he worked as a mime in Rome's Piazza Navona by day and as a disc jockey in English at Radio Daily American by night. At the end of the semester, he got an offer to show tour of Italy. It didn't pay much, but it did cover expenses. At the end of the tour, the record company sponsoring the show made him an offer he couldn't refuse: if he would record with them, they would put him on Italian television. The record company made good on their offer, and even before the record was recorded, David was a co-star on the phenomenally popular program, "TILT!".
EMI records, seeing David's success, bought out his contract and put him on the San Remo music festival as a special guest star. The record was immediately a top 40 hit. This meant gigs and other TV programs. Then came movies and a high-brow theater show for La Scala di Milano. He became one of the most prolific writers for the Italian version of the popular British political satire program, "Spitting Image". To this day however, most Italians know him and his ZED Robot alter ego from a live daily program that became one of the most popular television programs in Italian television history, "Pronto Raffaella?", a variety/talk show starring Raffaella Carà. It was the perfect comedy gym for David. Every weekday, he wrote and performed a sketch and improvised live (no 7-second delay) with celebrity guest stars. Guests included Gene Wilder, Gina Lollobrigida, Sergio Leone, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and a cavalcade of local and international celebrities.
In 1989, David returned to the United States. He auditioned for, and won, a position at the Comedy Store in Hollywood, California. In '91, he married his Italian girlfriend. He played Vegas. He made the rounds of the most popular American television programs. In '93, he was the first new comedian on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In January of '94, David and his wife were nearly wiped out in the Northridge earthquake. Measuring a 7.8 on the Richter scale, it destroyed almost everything they had. All the work he had scheduled seemed to dry up before his eyes at the same time. A week later, they discovered they had a baby on the way. But 1994 still had surprises in store.
In June, David was called back to Italy to do his own TV show, but not for the Italians; for an international satellite television network, to thirty-five countries, in English. The Mr. Zed Show ran for five years in its various versions. Re-run in the late night, it regularly beat out the Late Show with David Letterman in the region. In the meantime, the Japanese and the Brits woke up to ZED. In November of the same year, ZED appeared live for the first time on Japanese television, on NHK's "Zakubaran", as his first daughter, Sara Traylor, was born in Rome. The Jack Dee Show from London followed shortly thereafter. In '97, David's second daughter, Marina, was born.
David is still based in Rome, as it's a lot closer to London and the same distance from Tokyo as Los Angeles. In 2003, he won the Most Unique Performer Award at the Tokyo International Comedy Festival. As of this writing, he has written and performed in nine TV series in three languages on four continents and made guest appearances on many more. A believer that "Man does not live by Zed alone," he has diversified, and to many is now better known for straight acting roles. In 2015, he completed two films, "Blood on Méliès Moon", as French film pioneer Georges Méliès, and "In Guerra Per Amore", an Italian romantic comedy about the U.S. invasion of Sicily in World War II.
