Gage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 3.0

A comedian who built and then completely inhabited a single character: Pee-wee Herman, developed on stage with the Groundlings troupe and carried through the Tim Burton-directed Pee-wee's Big Adventure and the Saturday-morning series Pee-wee's Playhouse. For most of the 1980s he conducted every public appearance and interview in character, an unusual level of commitment that made Pee-wee a genuine cultural fixture. A 1991 indecent-exposure arrest badly damaged his career, though he continued performing and returned to the role decades later before his death in 2023.