Overview (3)

Mini Bio (1)

Trade Mark (2)

Never speaks while performing with Penn, and only rarely speaks when acting.



Uses a wide variety of facial expressions to supplement not speaking.



Trivia (23)



With partner Penn Jillette , half of comedy-magic team Penn & Teller.

Taught English and Latin at Lawrence High School in Lawrenceville, Mercer County, New Jersey.



Driver's license reads "NFN Teller". "NFN" is short for "No First Name".



Changed his name to Teller legally, and has one of the few US passports issued with a single name.





Despite his trademark of never speaking, Teller has appeared in speaking roles in several films and television series, including the Learning Channel's "Mysteries of Magic", in which he appeared for an interview, as himself, without stage partner Penn Jillette

Extremely talented painter.





His green room at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino was redone by Penn Jillette and the crew from the show "While You Were Out" on TLC.

Plays the vibraphone.



Has had essays published in the New Yorker magazine.





Taught English and Latin at the same high school that Jon Stewart and Thom Bray attended.

Teller, like Penn Jillette, is a staunch atheist with a libertarian political philosophy.





He and stage partner Penn were contestants on an episode of celebrity Fear Factor (2001). Teller performed all of the stunts while Penn was left out of the action. In the end, the duo was beaten by Keshia Knight Pulliam

His father was of Russian Jewish descent and his mother had British Isles ancestry.





On his guest appearance on Die Simpsons (1989), he spoke five lines, a rarity for this usually silent actor.



He spoke in his role in Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012) when he said, "Miss Taggart, maybe you should take the side door. It's getting pretty dicey outside.".

Attended and graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.



Attended and graduated from Amherst College in Anherst, Massachusetts.



Performed a nightly show at the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada (2003).



He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Live Theatre at 7003 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on April 5, 2013.



He and Aaron Posner were awarded the 2016 Joseph Jefferson (Equity) Award for Director of a Play for "The Tempest" at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in Chicago, Illinois.



Although he never, as a rule, speaks, he did say the words 'Thank you' at Sheldon and Amy's wedding in 'Big Bang Theory'.



Was contacted by the producers of The Big Bang Theory to play Larry Fowler, Amy Farrah-Fowler's dad, in the season 11 finale after they finalized the script and realized he would be the perfect person for the part, as Amy's dad didn't speak for most of the show and her mother kept speaking for him.



His trademark of not speaking while on stage doing magic stems from his days doing a magic act in college. He found the audience would pay more attention to his act and not heckle or interrupt him if he did not speak.



Personal Quotes (35)

Magic is the art of creating false (but funny or beautiful) cause-and-effect relationships. That's our area of expertise. When we do it on a stage, the audience is fooled, but only for the moment, only in the theater. They know they're watching a show. They know it's all tricks. They do not go home and try to float in the air or catch bullets in their teeth. [But] When we see scam artists peddling false cause-and-effect as reality; when we see the tools of theater and poetry used to victimize the vulnerable; when we sick people submitting to "medical procedures" that belong in a Three Stooges movie; all this enrages us.



If there existed even one psychic who had predicted that disaster, we'd be very, very interested. But, nope. What haunts me about 9/11 is the horrible knowledge that those who did the deed did it to further the divine will. Whenever we hear a politician bless killing, we should think twice.



In real life, the most important decision you ever make is, where does reality leave off and make-believe begin? If you make a mistake about that, you're dead. You know, you're out on the street corner. You think there's no bus coming. You step out, you're dead.



When a magician lets you notice something on your own, his lie becomes impenetrable.



Nothing fools you better than the lie you tell yourself.



If you do something that you're proud of, that someone else understands, that is a thing of beauty that wasn't there before - you can't beat that.



Indian street magic tends to be very gory, blood and guts. One trick is for a magician to take a knife and appear to cut his kid's head almost off. The magician then says to the crowd, 'Well I can continue to cut off my son's head or you can all give me some money.' Then he wanders around and takes 10 rupees from everyone and restores his son.



I'm a lazy sod.



Sometimes, magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.



I'm more apt to cry at something beautiful than at something sad.



Doing beautiful things is its own reward.



Magic is an art form where you lie and tell people you are lying.



Generally, magicians don't know what to say, so they say stupid and redundant crap like,'Here I am holding a red ball.'



Magicians have done controlled testing in human perception for thousands of years.



As a kid, I was a Hitchcock lover; I cared about the dark side of things.



Nobody who is a Penn & Teller fan thinks of us first and foremost as magicians, but as a comedy team.



Neuroscientists are novices at deception.



I always assumed I'd spend my life happily performing in artsy-fartsy little theaters.



Comedically, unpleasantness is great fun.



Reality seems so simple. We just open our eyes and there it is. But that doesn't mean it is simple.



Given my absolute druthers, I would certainly like to see that every part of my body is used for spare parts for science.



I believe in art.



Magic's about understanding - and then manipulating - how viewers digest the sensory information.



Onstage, I find absolutely nothing but exhilaration in not talking.



If there isn't at least the threat of violence in art, it tends to be kind of tiresome.



If you read Shakespeare's stage directions, all the gore and violence is right in there.



In America, magic has never been an important part of peoples' lives.



The silent thing onstage allows for a kind of intimacy that no conversation can have. If I just shut up, we're forced to look at each other and really confront that moment.



People come up to me on the street and make some little joke - like they'll say, 'Excuse me, sir, what time is it?' And I'll say, you know, '5:15,' and they'll say, 'Hey! Made you talk!' And that's merely a way of saying, 'I know your work and I like you.'



People do not come to a Penn & Teller show to see a magic show. They just don't. They come to see weird stuff that they can see no place else, that will make them laugh and make the little hairs stand up on the backs of their necks.



The place we want to explore unpleasantness in the real world is in art.



The Boy Scouts of America is no longer entirely what people think it is. Essentially, it has been hijacked by religious conservatives.



Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology. If the audience asks, 'How the hell did he do that?' then the experiment was successful.



People take reality for granted.



To most people who have a point of view, merely being on TV is an intrinsic good.

