APPLETON, WIS. — Actor, author and journalist Ben Stein, who earned cult status as the boring high school teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and hosted the Emmy-winning game show “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” presents “How to Ruin Your Life” Wednesday, May 9 at 7 p.m. in an address at the Lawrence University Memorial Chapel, 510 E. College. Ave., Appleton.
Based on his best-selling humor self-help book of the same name, the address is free and open to the public, but tickets will be required. Tickets for the general public will be available through the Lawrence University Box Office (832-6749) beginning Wednesday, April 25. There will be a limit of four tickets per person.
Stein, 63, who holds a degree in economics from Columbia University and a law degree from Yale University, has enjoyed an exceptionally diverse career, including stints as a civil rights activist, an attorney, a law professor, a speech-writer for presidents Nixon and Ford and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal. A frequent guest commentator on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Stein has written more than a dozen books, among them “Hollywood Days, Hollywood Nights: The Diary of a Mad Screenwriter,” “Tommy and Me: The Making of a Dad” and 2004’s “Can America Survive?”
But it is as an actor that Stein is perhaps best known. In addition to his turn as a boring economics teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he has appeared in nearly two dozen other films, among them “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” and “Honeymoon in Vegas.” He also has had roles in more than 20 television shows, including “The Wonder Years,” “Full House” and “Murphy Brown.”
In 1997, he launched his own quiz show, “Win Ben Stein’s Money,” which ran for five years on Comedy Central and won seven Emmy Awards, including one for Stein as outstanding game show host.
