Only a handful of today’s artists can claim their success began with YouTube, and even less, if any, having then been named alongside such luminaries as Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Eddie Murphy in Rolling Stone’s just released list of the 50 Best Comics of All Time. In comedian Russell Peters’ case, “success” may be a drastic understatement.

Russell Peters was born and raised in Canada, where his parents had emigrated to from India in the 1960’s. From a solidly working-class family, Peters learned the value of levity from his father and Russell’s own observations on the family’s struggles with racism and multicultural differences.

Peters started doing stand-up at the age of nineteen at open mics in his native Toronto in 1989. He spent the next fifteen years honing his craft at clubs across Canada and the United Kingdom.

In 2004, Peters gained critical and global recognition for his CTV “Comedy Now!” special which wound up on YouTube. Peters says: “I never put the special on YouTube. I still don’t know how to upload anything on the web to this day.” That upload launched a new level of fame and unforeseen success. It also led to larger and larger shows, not only in arenas in his native Canada, where he became the first comedian to sell-out Toronto’s Air Canada Centre in 2007 (as of today, six times and over 100,000 people), but to arenas in the United States, the UK, Australia, South Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Since that time Peters has released five stand-up specials on Showtime, Comedy Central and Netflix; Outsourced (2006); Red, White and Brown (2008); The Green Card Tour Live from the O2 Arena (2010); Notorious (2013); Almost Famous (2016) and a documentary series Russell Peters Vs The World (2013).

Peters has also appeared in CBS hit show Life in Pieces and has starred in several features; The Clapper (2017), Public Schooled (2017), Supercon (2017), Ripped (2017), The Jungle Book (2016), Source Code (2011), Breakaway (2012), Girl In Progress (2011) as well as having lent his voice to Family Guy, Bojack Horseman, Bob’s Burgers and Ribbit. He has also appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Jimmy Fallon Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Lopez Tonight, Craig Ferguson, the Queen Latifah Show and Def Comedy Jam.