Adam Whitney Savage (born July 15, 1967) is an American special effects designer and fabricator, actor, educator, and television personality and producer, best known as the former co-host (with Jamie Hyneman) of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters and Unchained Reaction. His model work has appeared in major films, including Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and The Matrix Reloaded. He hosts the TV program Savage Builds, which premiered on the Science Channel on June 14, 2019. He is most active on the platform Adam Savage's Tested, which includes a website and a YouTube channel.
Early life
Savage was born in New York City and raised in North Tarrytown, New York (renamed Sleepy Hollow in 1996). He graduated from Sleepy Hollow High School in 1985. His maternal grandfather Cushman Haagensen was a surgeon who pioneered breast cancer surgery. His father, Whitney Lee Savage (1928–1998), was a painter, filmmaker, and animator known for his work on Sesame Street. The Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia, features some of his work in its permanent collection. Whitney Lee was also known for directing the 1969 underground short film Mickey Mouse in Vietnam. His mother, Karen, was a psychotherapist. Savage was the second youngest of six children, with the four older children coming from his parents' previous marriages. He has two older brothers, two older sisters, and one younger sister. His sister Kate Savage is also an artist.
Savage began acting as a child and had five years of acting school. His early credits include voicing animated characters that his father produced for Sesame Street, Mr. Whipple's stock boy Jimmy in a Charmin commercial, and a drowning young man saved by a lifeguard in the 1985 Billy Joel music video "You're Only Human (Second Wind)."
Savage abandoned acting by the time he was 19. "I had passed on that in favor of doing stuff with my hands," he said. He describes MythBusters as "the perfect marriage of two things, performance, and special effects." As a teenager in Sleepy Hollow, Savage routinely visited the local bike shop to have flat tires fixed. The shop showed him how to do the repairs himself. From this experience, Savage said, "I realized you could take a bike apart and put it back together and it wasn't that hard… I've been building and putting bicycles together since then."
Savage broke his neck on his eighteenth birthday in a swimming accident, an injury he survived without suffering long-term consequences.
Career
Savage has worked as an animator, graphic designer, carpenter, projectionist, film developer, television presenter, set designer, toy designer, and gallery owner. He worked as a model maker on Galaxy Quest, Bicentennial Man, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, The Mummy, The Matrix Reloaded, and Space Cowboys, among others. Savage played the role of a helpful engineer in the 2001 film Ever Since the World Ended and the part of an army surplus store owner who sells a man a rocket engine for his pickup truck in 2006 in The Darwin Awards, which also featured MythBusters co-star Jamie Hyneman. He appeared with Hyneman on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on the May 1, 2008, episode "The Theory of Everything." He appears as a special effects artist in the "making of" material for The Matrix Revolutions, where he discusses some of the miniature effects used and the difficulties involved. He previously taught advanced model making in the Department of Industrial Design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.