Early life and education

Holland was born in Kittanning, Pennsylvania and raised in Meadville, Pennsylvania. He was an honor student, graduating from Meadville Area Sr. High School-M. A. S. H. While there, he wrote, directed and produced several parodies of movies popular at the time. He graduated in 1985 from UCLA's school of Theater, Film and Television.

Career

Holland got his career break when Steven Spielberg saw his UCLA thesis film Chicken Thing —a 12 minute comedy horror short—and hired Holland to write and direct on the second season of Amazing Stories.

Holland directed 52 episodes of The Larry Sanders Show for HBO. He received an Emmy for the series finale "FLIP".

Holland then started working in the Fox sitcom Malcolm in the Middle where he directed 26 episodes and served as co-executive producer for the show. Holland earned two Emmy Awards for the show: both wins were for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, his first one for the pilot episode of the series, the second for the season two episode "Bowling"—for which he also won the DGA award for excellence in comedy directing.

Holland co-created Wonderfalls with Bryan Fuller - for which they received a WGA nomination.

He has also directed the feature films The Wizard, Krippendorf's Tribe and Firehouse Dog.

Holland has directed twice for the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. He directed the episode "Generalissimo," an episode for which he received his seventh Emmy Award nomination, but lost to Jeffrey Blitz for The Office.

Holland worked with Justin Berfield, with whom he had worked on Malcolm in the Middle, on Sons of Tucson, a 2010 Fox television sitcom. He directed five of the thirteen episodes and executive produced the series.

Two of his shows were named in TV Guide's "100 greatest Episodes of Television", the "Everybody Loves Larry" episode of The Larry Sanders Show and "The Life Of Bryan" episode of My So-Called Life.

Personal life

Holland has been married to actor and singer Scotch Ellis Loring since 2008. The couple are fathers to triplets, born in 2010 via a surrogate.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]