George Wendt was born on October 17, 1948 and passed away on May 20, 2025. He is best remembered for his role as Norm Peterson on the NBC sitcom Cheers.

George was born in Chicago and went to the University of Notre Dame for college, though he was expelled after receiving a 0.0 GPA during his junior year. Later, he attended Rockhurst College in Missouri and graduated with a degree in economics.

George started out at Second City, an improv comedy theater in Chicago. It's also where he met his future wife, Bernadette Birkett. In 1980, George had small roles in the movies My Bodyguard and Somewhere In Time, and the tv shows Taxi, Soap, and M*A*S*H. In 1982, he landed his first reoccurring role on Making the Grade, though it was canceled after six episodes.

His breakthrough came with the sitcom Cheers. George, as Norm Peterson, appeared in all 275 episodes of Cheers from 1982 - 1993. He earned six Emmy nominations for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

After Cheers, he started in The George Wendt Show, which featured him as a garage mechanic with a radio show, which ran for two months. He had a few appearances in other shows: The Larry Sanders Show, Columbo, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Frasier. He had a few movie roles as well: Becker, The Little Rascals, Man of the house, Spice World, and outside Providence.

In his later years, he appeared in various movies, tv shows, talk shows, music videos, and theater productions. In 2023, he competed on The Masked Singer. In 2024, he reunited with most of the cast of Cheers at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards, presenting the awards for best directing and best writing of a comedy series.

George married his wife, Bernadette, in 1978. They had three children together. Bernadette later voiced his off-screen wife, Vera, in Cheers. When George passed, the real life Cheers Beacon Hill bar honored him by setting up a memorial with a full glass of beer in the area of the bar where Norm always sat.