Darrell Hammond

Since returning to Los Angeles in 2017, Hammond has appeared in an episode of Criminal Minds, At Home with Amy Sedaris, and a Friday Night Lights spoof series on sports website The Kicker.

The following season Hammond reappeared on the show, doing his impression of Trump as the Apprentice host began performing well in the Republican primaries after Taran Killam's take on the candidate failed to resonate with viewers. He moved back to New York in 2016 after Trump won the nomination, expecting to be appearing on a weekly basis during the election. However, Lorne Michaels decided instead to go with Alec Baldwin's impression, since it more effectively captured the contemporary Trump.

Beginning in May 2015, Hammond began playing the role of fast-food mascot Colonel Sanders in an ad campaign for KFC, until Norm Macdonald replaced him on August 17, 2015.

In 2015 Hammond revived his Trump impression on SNL, after Taran Killam's take failed to gain traction. The following year he returned to New York after five years, expecting that with Trump having received the Republican presidential nomination that year, he would be appearing on the show more in the fall. When Alec Baldwin replaced him, he was so shattered that Antabuse and a beta blocker were prescribed to him to prevent a relapse of his addiction issues. Hammond and his girlfriend eventually moved back to Los Angeles, where reminders of Baldwin's Trump impression were not so ubiquitous.

On September 19, 2014, Hammond was announced as the new announcer of SNL, replacing Don Pardo, who had died the month before.

In 2014 Hammond took over the announcer role on SNL starting with the 40th-season premiere, replacing Pardo, who had died that August. Since he began as announcer, he has also appeared in skits numerous times reprising his Clinton and Trump impersonations.

In August 2011, Hammond filed a lawsuit against Jose Mendez and Dona Monteleone after a car accident in which he was the passenger. Monteleone, who was driving Hammond's vehicle at the time of the accident, is a Manhattan real estate agent.

During an October 2011 interview with CNN, Hammond revealed that his mother had brutally abused him during his childhood. This trauma from abuse led to cutting, several hospitalizations due to psychiatric issues, and diagnoses which initially included bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder.

Harper Collins published Hammond's memoir, God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked, in 2011. It is an account of his abusive childhood, psychiatric issues, struggles with substance abuse, and experiences on Saturday Night Live. In 2015 he adapted it into a one-man play starring himself, directed by Christopher Ashley, which debuted in San Diego's La Jolla Playhouse to positive reviews. The director is hoping to bring it to Broadway, although Hammond would prefer someone else, particularly Jim Carrey or Kevin Spacey, play him instead, as it was so stressful he had to be hospitalized twice during the Los Angeles run.

In the summer of 2007, Hammond made his Broadway theatre debut, playing the role of Vice Principal Douglas Panch in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. In 2009, Hammond had a guest starring role on the FX drama Damages. The same summer, Hammond appeared with Eli Manning, Peyton Manning, and Donald Trump in an Oreo commercial, where he does an impression of Trump.

Hammond says that he was medicated throughout his tenure on Saturday Night Live, and that he cut himself backstage and was once taken from the studio to a psychiatric ward. The incident helped him come to terms with what he and the doctor who treated him realized was his fundamental issue, the posttraumatic stress disorder lingering from his abusive childhood. Just prior to his 2000 appearance as Al Gore in a sketch parodying that year's first presidential debate, he had a panic attack over not remembering his lines. After cutting himself up the length of the arm and putting a gauze pad over it, he felt better and gave a performance so effective that Gore's campaign staff made him watch it to understand why he had aroused negative reactions in some viewers.

Hammond first publicly mentioned his incarceration in the Bahamas as a guest on a 1997 episode of the radio show Loveline; and again when he returned to Loveline in 2000 and 2004, as well as during an appearance on the Opie & Anthony show in 2012.

Hammond was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2009. He previously held the record for the longest consecutive tenure of any SNL cast member in the show's history (14 seasons), until he was surpassed by Kenan Thompson in 2017.

Hammond has admitted to struggling with alcoholism and cocaine abuse. The death of a close friend in 1991 led to a relapse of drug and alcohol abuse. Hammond regularly wears all black when not performing as an homage to another friend who took his own life in 1992. After suffering another relapse in 2009, Hammond went to rehab.

After the end of the 34th season, Hammond retired from the show after a record-breaking 14 years as a repertory player. Hammond was the last SNL cast member from the 1990s to leave the show. After leaving the show, he has made multiple cameo appearances.

Hammond married his wife, Elizabeth, on May 9, 1990. The couple divorced in the early 1990s, then remarried in 1997. They have one daughter together, Mia, born in 1998. Hammond was seen with another woman several times in May and June 2011, prompting speculation about their marriage. During a 2012 appearance on the Imus in the Morning radio program, Hammond revealed that the couple was in the process of divorcing and shortly later that same year the divorce became final.

In the late 1980s, Hammond gained fame for his impersonations of Elmer Fudd and other Looney Tunes characters in the comedy single "Wappin'." The song was popular enough with Dr. Demento listeners to be included on the show's 20th-anniversary compilation.

In the late 1980s, Hammond said that he worked briefly as a stand-up comedian on Premier Cruise Line ships. One evening, while the ship was docked in the Bahamas, Hammond says he visited a restaurant, where he consumed the equivalent of 16 shots of rum. He claimed that a man repeatedly pestered him throughout the evening to take a dollar bill with trace amounts of cocaine on it. When the comedian left the bar to use the restroom, the man followed him into the stall and told him, "I think you should take this with you." Believing he was about to be mugged, he relented, and the man placed the bill inside Hammond's pocket. Local police were waiting outside the restroom and quickly arrested him. According to Hammond, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration later told him that the episode had been a setup, and that local authorities regularly entrap American tourists; he spent a weekend in a crude jail cell. Hammond was released after his father traveled to the Bahamas and paid $3,000 for his son's release.

He played baseball in high school and at Brevard Community College. In high school, he was a teammate of San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy. He went on to attend the University of Florida, where he graduated in 1978 with a degree in advertising and a 2.1 GPA. He credits UF theater professor David Shelton for encouraging his work. After completing college, Hammond moved to New York City where he worked as a waiter, studied at HB Studio, played roles in theater productions, performed one set at a comedy club at age 26, and then returned to Florida, where he became a voiceover artist in the Orlando area.

Darrell Clayton Hammond (born October 8, 1955) is an American actor, stand-up comedian and impressionist. He was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1995 to 2009, and has been its announcer since 2014.