He didn't write it, though. It was Bill Cosby's routine about God talking to Noah. Pollak would play the Cosby record and lip-synch the entire monologue for friends, family members and audiences at an assortment of talent shows.

"This is the Lord," Pollak would lip-synch as God.

"Right," he'd say as Noah. "Who is this really? Am I on `Candid Camera?'"

A few years later, when Pollak eventually developed his own material, he began to rise quickly through the ranks of show business.

On Saturday, Jan. 27, Pollak returns to his Bay Area roots, performing at the Marin Veterans' Memorial Auditor-ium in San Rafael. The event will benefit the Volunteer Center of Marin.

"As a stand-up, I get to share my twisted view of life with a roomful of strangers whose love and validation I truthfully yet pathetically crave," said Pollak, 36, who currently balances movie work and touring as a stand-up comedian.

Born in San Francisco, Pollak lived and worked in the Bay Area until he was 26. His family moved to the South Bay when he was 2, and he was a bar mitzvah and confirmed at San Jose's Temple Emanu-El.

"Everyone gives a speech at their bar mitzvah. Mine was more of a monologue, with applause breaks," Pollak said. "The rabbi was my straight man during the haftorah. Not a lot of people can say that.

"You know you're going into stand-up comedy," Pollak adds facetiously, "when the rabbi says, `So Kevin, I understand something funny happened on the way to temple?'"

Pollak's family saga as Jews in America closely parallels the a movie in which he himself starred -- the first movie, in fact, that Pollak said allowed people to see him as a legitimate actor -- Barry Levinson's "Avalon."

Like the immigrant grandfather in that movie, Pollak's paternal grandfather from Minsk, Russia, was in the nightclub business. He also ran several restaurants, including Tommy's Joynt on Van Ness in San Francisco.

Like the movie's father and cousin characters (Pollak played the latter), Pollak's own father worked in the furniture business, designing kitchens for Sears.

As in the film, Pollak's father moved the family from the city to thesuburbs. San Jose in the 1960s was a wide-open area of walnut trees and apple orchards.

And of course, like the grandchild character in Avalon, Pollak went into show business.

Pollak got his first paid job as a comedian when he was 18 years old, working one night in a nightclub in the city of Campbell.

Seven years later, in 1982, Pollak took second place in the San Francisco International Comedy Competition. Exactly one year after that, he moved to Los Angeles to begin a film and television career.

Noting that "your first movie should be your worst," Pollak's turned out to be "Million Dollar Mystery." The film's characters were all looking for bags full of money. In the movie, "We found three of the four bags, and [the producers] were going to give a million dollars to the audience member who figured out where the fourth one was. I thought it was a good promotion. The movie opened and made about $500."

But Pollak's fortunes improved with his next movie, "Willow," directed by Ron Howard. In the years following, he worked with some of the top actors in Hollywood: Steve Martin in "L.A. Story," Denzel Washington in "Ricochet," Demi Moore, Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men," and Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone in "Casino."

Four weeks ago, Pollak married his longtime companion, Lucy Webb. The couple has no plans for children yet. "Between us, my wife and I have five nieces and nephews. We love spending time with them almost as much as we enjoy giving them back."

Originally published over at the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California website.