Tommy Chong

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Tommy Chong

Tommy Chong
Born: May 24, 1938 (age 68)
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Occupation: Actor, Comic, Business, Musician

Thomas "Tommy" Chong B. Kin (born May 24, 1938) is a Canadian-born actor and musician who is well-known for his stereotypical portrayals of hippie-era stoners. He is most widely known for his role as Chong in the marijuana-themed Cheech & Chong comedy movies with Cheech Marin.

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Chong was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to Stanley (of Chinese descent), a truck driver, and Lorna Jean Chong (of Ulster-Scots ancestry). Chong was married in 1975 to wife Shelby. He has six children: sons Paris, Marcus and Gilbran, and daughters Precious, Robbi, and Rae Dawn Chong. Marcus, Robbi, and Rae Dawn have all pursued careers in acting.

When Chong was still young, the family moved to Calgary, Alberta, to a neighborhood Chong refers to as the Dog Patch. He says that his father had "been wounded in World War II, and there was a veterans' hospital in Calgary. He bought a five-hundred dollar house in Dog Patch, and raised his family on fifty dollars a week." [1]

By age eleven Chong was playing guitar, chiefly country-and-western music. Soon, he was introduced to rhythm and blues, became a professional musician, and quit school. He formed one of Calgary's earliest rock and roll/rhythm and blues bands, the Colors or the Shades, but was eventually requested by the police to leave town after a particularly rowdy gig, according to his account. Chong and the Shades then left for the closest metropolis, Vancouver, where Chong bought a club, the Elegant Parlour, and played guitar and sang in the house band, a Motown band named Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, briefly featuring a very young Jimi Hendrix [2]. Among his compositions for the group were "Does Your Mama Know About Me", which hit #29 on the United States pop chart and #5 on the US R&B chart.

In the late 1980s, Chong became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

Cheech and Chong, while one of the most successful comedy acts of all time, experienced creative differences and split in 1985. This was devastating to Chong. To him, Cheech was "closer than a wife. The only thing we didn't do was have sex." Of their split, he says, "It was like a death in the family. I don't know if I'll ever get over it."

Chong was a recurring character and later a regular character as the hippie "Leo" during the second, third, fourth, seventh, and eighth seasons of That '70s Show. He also played a role as a hippie in Dharma and Greg.

Chong has an unabashed love of marijuana. He used to say "I get high constantly! If you smoke pot, eat well and work out, I guarantee you'll live forever." Chong is also a marijuana activist and is a supporter of marijuana legalization & medical use of marijuana.

However, in I Chong: Meditations from the Joint, he wrote that he has been on a "pot fast" since his arrest in 2003, and will not smoke again until pot is legal in the U.S. He also says that he has never been nearly as much of a stoner as the character he portrayed in Cheech and Chong's routines and films.

In 2003, Chong was targeted by two American investigations code-named Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter, which sought out businesses selling drug paraphernalia, mostly water pipes. He was charged for his part in financing and promoting Chong Glass/Nice Dreams, a company started by his son Paris. Chong agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute drug paraphernalia in exchange for non-prosecution of wife, Shelby, and his son.

While 54 of the 55 individuals charged as a result of the operations were sentenced to fines and home detentions, Chong was sentenced on September 11, 2003, to 9 months in a federal prison, forfeiture of $103,000, and a year of probation.

While government officials denied that Chong was treated any differently from the other defendants, many felt that he was made an example of by the government. Soon afterwards, marijuana advocates started the Free Tommy Chong! movement that called for his release.

Chong served his sentence from October 8, 2003 to July 7, 2004, and in December 2004 was to appear off-Broadway in a show entitled The Marijuana-Logues, a parody of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. His legal concerns, including that audiences were actually smoking marijuana in some of the shows early in its tour ultimately caused him to quit the show.

In 2005, Chong returned to his role as Leo on That '70s Show.

In September 2005 a/k/a Tommy Chong premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The documentary, directed by Josh Gilbert, chronicles Chong's recent legal troubles and features interviews with Cheech Marin, Bill Maher, Lou Adler, Eric Schlosser and Jay Leno.

In 2006, Chong wrote a book about his experiences in jail and his interest in meditation, called The I Chong: Meditations From The Joint (ISBN 1-4169-1554-0)

  • In the documentary Michael Jackson: The legend continues, Chong credited himself along with Bobby Taylor and The Vancouvers as discovering the Jackson 5.
  • His name is mentioned in "Don't Download This Song" by Weird Al Yankovic.
  • In the summer of 2006, shortly after his book came out, Tommy Chong was a "Not My Job Guest" on Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! answering questions on M. Night Shyamalan He did not win the prize for the listener.
  • Chong sits on the NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) advisory board.

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