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The actor, series creator, producer, screenwriter and disk jockey Shawn Wayans was born on January 19, 1971, in New York, NY. He is the second youngest of 10 siblings. Shawn made his film debut with a small part in the movie "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," which stars half his family. He also was a DJ from 1990-1993, named SW1, for the Fox comedy show "In Living Color," in which he later had a recurring role. Shawn is most famous for his role of Ashtray in the movie hit "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood." Soon after, he went on to star in the films "White Chicks" and " Scary Movies 1,2,3."
As a key member of what many comedy lovers consider to be one of the funniest families on Hollywood, producer/writer/actor Shawn Wayans has been instrumental in bringing such hit parodies as Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, Scary Movie, and its sequel Scary Movie 2 to the big screen. Though Wayans has occasionally branched out to appear in such non-Wayans productions as the 1999 action thriller New Blood, it's mainly family that serves as this funnyman's bread and butter, with a lead role in the WB sitcom The Wayans Bros. leading to increasingly prominent roles in such family productions as White Chicks and Little Man. Raised in the Chelsea area of Manhattan with his nine siblings, Wayans credits his family's boundless sense of humor in helping him to get by when money was tight and the future looked grim. Supporting roles in such early efforts as elder brother Keenen Ivory's I'm Gonna Git You Sucka and the hit sketch comedy series In Living Color (for which he also DJ'ed) encouraged Wayans to try his hand at writing, and in the following years he would team with sibling Marlon to great success. Specializing in the kind of low-brow comedy that appealed mainly to the high-school and college set, the two Wayans soon found that an ideal way to gauge the success was in how much their efforts offended their mother. When their disapproving mom walked out on Scary Movie 2, the pair knew they had a surefire hit on their hands. After appearing as the titular "females" in the 2004 comedy White Chicks, it was time to shrink his best collaborator down to size for the big-head-on-a-little-body comedy Little Man in 2006. Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide



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