The son of two schoolteachers and raised in Quebec City, Canada, Macdonald was a stand-up comic and briefly a writer for the sitcom Roseanne when he was picked to join the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1993.Īfter leaving the show in 1998, he created and starred in the comedy The Norm Show, playing a former NHL player kicked out of the league for gambling and tax evasion and forced into community service as a social worker. Norm had the most unique comedic voice I have ever encountered and he was so relentlessly and uncompromisingly funny,' he said on Twitter. 'I am absolutely devastated about Norm Macdonald.
Former host of the The Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien, said Macdonald was relentlessly funny.
