Etan Cohen

Born in Israel to a Jewish family, Cohen grew up in Sharon, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Maimonides School and Harvard College, where he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon.^[1][2]

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His first produced scripts, in 1995 and 1997, were for Beavis and Butthead, where he was credited as Etan Cohen.^{[citation needed]} He has since written for other Mike Judge-directed projects, including King of the Hill from 2001 to 2005, and for the feature film Idiocracy in 2006. In the late 1990s he worked on two other television series – the animated Recess and the short lived It's Like, You Know.... In 2007, he wrote the short film ‘My Wife is Retarded,’.^[3] After scripting Idiocracy, he worked on the animated series, American Dad! and wrote the episode, "Failure Is Not a Factory-Installed Option". The American Dad! minor character of the same name is named for him.

In 2008, Cohen co-wrote, along with Ben Stiller and Justin Theroux, the action-comedy film Tropic Thunder. He also co-wrote, along with Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, which earned an Annie Award nomination for best Writing in a Feature Production.

Cohen penned the script for 2012's Men in Black 3. In 2015, he made his directorial debut with Get Hard, which he also co-wrote.

Cohen wrote and directed the 2018 film Holmes & Watson. The film was a critical and commercial flop and later earned him a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director.^[4]

Cohen is an observant Jew.^[5] He keeps kosher and does not work on the Jewish Sabbath. He and his wife send their children to a Jewish day school.^[5]