Karen Corday
Comedian Chris Rock is a comedy legend. He made his film debut at the age of 20 in 1985’s hip hop classic Krush Groove in an uncredited role as Person Standing Next to Club Phone During Fight, but went on to breakthrough in 1991’s New Jack City as the doomed Pookie. He has since appeared in a wide range of hit movies, is one of the most famous stand-up comedians of all time, and was a Saturday Night Live cast member from 1990 to 1993. In addition to his stunning career, Rock is a proud father. In fact, Rock is such a doting and devoted dad that he waited until he was 55 years old to get his very first tattoo, making it a family affair by getting inked with his beloved daughters.
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Chris Rock: Comedian, Movie Star, Director, Writer, Producer
Christopher Julius Rock was born in Andrews, South Carolina on February 7, 1965. When he was a baby, his family moved to Brooklyn, New York, landing in Crown Heights before settling in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. He eventually dropped out of high school, later earning his GED. He started doing stand-up comedy at clubs like Catch A Rising Star, where he met and was befriended and mentored by comedian Eddie Murphy.
In 1990, Rock joined the cast of NBC’s Saturday Night Live along with Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, and David Spade. Together they were considered the “bad boys of SNL,” per Uproxx, and enjoyed success as part of the ‘90s SNL renaissance. Rock left the show in 1993; he was actually fired when word got out that he was planning on asking to leave in order to join the cast of the Fox sketch comedy series In Living Color. In Living Color was created, written, and produced by Keenan Ivory Wayans and featured a majority Black cast as well as a young Jennifer Lopez as one of the Fly Girl dancers. Rock did go on to appear as a special guest star on several episodes of In Living Color’s fifth season.
Rock has made several iconic HBO comedy specials, including the multi-Emmy Award-winning Bring The Pain (1996), Bigger & Blacker (1999), Never Scared (2004), and Kill The Messenger (2008). In 2018, Netflix released Rock’s first comedy special in over a decade, Chris Rock: Tamborine.
In addition to his stand-up career, Rock has been acting in Hollywood movies since the mid-1980s. He directed and starred in two films, Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife, and has appeared in a wide variety of movies, including The Longest Yard, Down To Earth, and Grown Ups, and he has led his vocal talents to the Madagascar series, including Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. He is also no stranger to television, creating Everybody Hates Chris, a series based on his childhood that ran from 2005 to 2009, and most recently starring on the fourth season of Fargo.
Chris Rock and His Ex-Wife Have Some Beautiful Daughters
Chris Rock was married to his now ex-wife Malaak Compton-Rock from 1996 until their divorce in 2016 after twenty years of marriage. Compton-Rock was a public relations manager who, per Crain’s, founded Styleworks, “a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that gives makeovers to women leaving public assistance and entering the workforce.” Per Fabiosa, Chris and Malaak have two biological daughters, Lola Simone and Zahra Savannah, and one (possibly) adopted daughter, Ntombi, who was born in South Africa.
Per a TMZ report from 2015, Ntombi began living with the Rock family in their New Jersey home when she was six months old. When Chris and Malaak began divorce proceedings, it came out that Ntombi was possibly never officially adopted, with Rock’s representative telling TMZ he did not have an adopted child. At any rate, Rock’s ex-wife’s social media contains many photos of all three girls, but it’s unclear if Chris Rock and Ntombi have a relationship.
Chris Rock Got His First Tattoo With His Daughter Lola
As reported by BCKOnline, Chris Rock recently joined Lola and Zahra on an outing to Bang Bang Tattoo in New York City, where he got his first tattoo at the age of 55. Per the tattoo studio’s Instagram account, Chris got a replica of a crown drawn by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and Lola,18, got a similar tattoo of a Basquiat dinosaur wearing the same crown. As Zahra is still just 16, she was presumably just along to support her dad and sister; perhaps she’ll get her own matching tat in the future.
