Roman Atwood American YouTuber Born 1983 in Millersport

Early life

Roman Bernard Atwood was born on 28 May 1983 in Millersport, Ohio, and attended Millersport High School. His parents are Curt Dale Atwood and Susan Atwood. He was filming and editing videos by his high school years. Before he turned to online video he worked at his family's rope factory, Atwood Rope.

Career

Atwood's first independent venture was a series of DVDs called The Nerd Herd, which he sold at the Warped Tour in 2006. He also took on film projects and commercial work around Columbus, Ohio. In 2010 he decided to concentrate on comedy and started a YouTube channel called Sketch Empire.

He is known for two YouTube channels. RomanAtwood carried his prank videos and has been inactive since 2016. It had more than ten million subscribers and its videos had been viewed over 1.4 billion times. The second, RomanAtwoodVlogs, shows updates from his daily life and had around 15 million subscribers and five billion views, and it stood at 15.2 million in October 2025. In May 2022 he began a third channel, RomanAtwoodPodcast, built around conversations with friends and guests including Steve-O, Vitaly and FouseyTube.

Several pranks account for much of his reach. In "Plastic Ball Prank", uploaded in January 2015, he filled his house with plastic balls about two and a half feet deep, turning it into a giant ball pit. The video drew the attention of Nissan, which gave him a 2015 GT-R in return for use of the footage in its "With Dad" Super Bowl XLIX advertisement, and the campaign won Brand Campaign at the fifth Streamy Awards. In "Anniversary Prank Backfires!!", from November 2013, he told Brittney Smith on their dating anniversary that he had been unfaithful, only for her to turn the joke around on him. Another video had him toilet-papering the house of the entertainer Howie Mandel with the help of Mandel's son Alex; Mandel later talked about it on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

In March 2014 he and others were arrested in Columbus for disorderly conduct and inducing panic during the filming of a prank in which he pretended to rob an ATM in a public place. He was released on bail and went to court, where supporters gathered. He was acquitted on the grounds of artistic expression and free speech.

In 2016 Atwood, Vitaly Zdorovetskiy and Dennis Roady released the film Natural Born Pranksters, produced by Lionsgate, which arrived on Netflix on 24 September 2016. Atwood is credited as its director. That year he also toured with the YouTuber Yousef Erakat as "Roman vs. Fousey", with shows in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, and he and his family took part in an episode of the TV series Tanked, on 1 July 2016, in which the hosts built a tank for his Smile More office.

Recognition

Atwood received the YouTube Silver Play Button in 2012, the Gold Play Button in 2013 and the Diamond Play Button in 2016. He was the second creator, after Germán Garmendia, to hold two Diamond Play Buttons, one for each of his first two channels.

Public roles

In 2013 Atwood founded Smile More, a merchandise line selling shirts, hooded tops, bracelets and other items. Orders were handled at first by Atwood and his wife from their basement; in 2016 the business moved to its own building on the same property, with more staff. In October 2021 he announced the first NFT of the Smile More collection, made with several artists. In May 2022 it was announced that Smile More would move to Texas through a partnership with his friend Matt Carriker and Carriker's company Bunker Branding, in which Atwood and his wife took a share of ownership. He also designed a board game, War and Pieces, in 2016.

Personal life

Atwood lives in Ohio. He met Brittney Smith in 2008 at a friend's wedding, where he was best man, and they married on 27 July 2018 in Maui, Hawaii. They have several children.