10 things you probably didn’t know about Jimmy Fallon

For Fallon, Lake Winnipesaukee is much more than the special camp where he and Justin Timberlake whisper sweet nothings to each other by flashlight and sing Third Eye Blind songs. Winnipesaukee is also a real-life romantic setting.

Fallon proposed to his now wife, Nancy Juvonen, on the dock at sunset in August 2007 at Juvonen’s family home in Wolfeboro on Lake Winnipesaukee, according to aboutrelationships.com.

Juvonen co-owns production company Flower Films with Barrymore and was introduced to Fallon on the set of his and Barrymore’s 2005 film, Fever Pitch.

They didn’t start dating until a couple of years later, however, when Barrymore invited Fallon to a birthday party for Juvonen in 2007. The rest, as they say, is history.

According to Fallon’s buddy and former SNL co-star Horatio Sanz, Fallon has definitely thrown a barroom haymaker or two in his day. 

“Yeah, we got in a couple of brawls,” Sanz said, according to Vulture. “I’ve seen Jimmy clock a few people.”

Sanz says his favorite fight happened after Fallon poured a beer on a guy’s hat, thinking it belonged to Sanz’s friend.

“The owner of the hat, we didn’t know who he was, said something like, ‘What the fuck are you guys doing?’ and Jimmy just punched him. He wasn’t that hurt; he just walked into a tornado of drunken stupidity. Yeah, Jimmy could fight. I don’t know where he learned, but he definitely scrapped with the best of them.”

Considering how musically inclined Fallon is, it’s not a huge surprise that James Fallon Sr. spent most of his youth in street corner doo-wop groups.

Senior had to cut back on his musical aspirations after Junior was born. He worked as a machine repairman for IBM to support his family, but it’s obvious he passed on his talents to his son.

Unless you are a Saturday Night Live die-hard, you might have missed this special moment between Fallon and McKellen (in character as Dame Maggie Smith) on the March 16, 2002, episode.

He may have grown up to be a bar-brawling comedian, but back in the day, Fallon wanted nothing more than to be a man of the cloth.

“I just, I loved the church. I loved the idea of it. I loved the smell of the incense. I loved the feeling you get when you left church. I loved, like, how this priest can make people feel this good,” he said in an interview with Fresh Air, via Sancte Pater. “My grandfather was very religious, so I used to go to Mass with him at like 6:45 in the morning, serve Mass. And then you made money too if you did weddings and funerals. You’d get, like, five bucks. And so I go, ‘OK, I can make money too.’ I go, ‘This could be a good deal for me.’ I thought I had the calling.”

Fallon got hired to star in a WB pilot before he was famous, which seems like a pretty good deal, considering The WB and CW have served as launching pads for numerous heartthrobs’ careers.

But Fallon wasn’t all that stoked about his new job. He would only sign on to the show if it included a clause in his contract stating he would be automatically released if he ever made SNL.

It’s hard to picture Fallon sitting at a computer and coding, but he is actually just a few credits shy of holding a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

Obviously Fallon has always looked up to Michaels because he is basically the SNL god, but Michaels is so much more than just Fallon’s ex-boss.

“Lorne helped me with everything — with relationships, with me getting famous,” Fallon has said, according to Vanity Fair. “I was going through certain steps, and there were certain things I couldn’t talk to my dad about because he wouldn’t know. Like ‘I have money now. Do I still rent? Do I buy an apartment?’ Or ‘I’m in L.A., and I have to rent a car.’ [Lorne voice] ‘You should get a Lexus because you want to be quiet.’ Or ‘Should I date this actress?’ [Lorne voice] ‘You can date her, but you probably shouldn’t marry her.’ And he’d be totally right.”

Fallon obviously has a pretty diverse career at this point, but before he made it big, all he wanted was to get on SNL.

“This was my ultimate goal,” he told Rolling Stone. “If I ever cut into a birthday cake and made a wish, I would wish to be on SNL. If I threw a coin into a fountain, I would wish to be on SNL. If I saw a shooting star, I would wish to be on SNL… I remember saying to myself, ‘If I don’t make it on [the show] before I’m 25, I’m going to kill myself.’ It’s crazy. I had no other plan. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have a girlfriend, I didn’t have anything going on. I had my career — that was it.”