Carvey was born from Bud Carvey, a high school teacher of business, and Billie Dahl, a schoolteacher. He has a brother, whose name is Brad, that Dana took as a model for his personation of “Garth Algar”, the weird, funny character he brought on the “Saturday Night live”, the show that gave Carvey his popularity.

The Carvey’s family moved to San Carlos, California, when Dana was three years old. Carvey went to the “Tierra Linda High” in San Carlos, and to the “Carlmont High School” in Belmont (where he joined the “Central Coast Section” champion cross country team). He then attended the “College of San Mateo” in San Mateo, and he finally went to the “San Francisco State University where he received his bachelor degree in broadcast communications.

Carvey started to perform after he finished his studies, and he moved to Hollywood. He rapidly got a small role in the movie “Halloween II” (1981), and in “This Is Spinal Tap” and “Racing with the Moon” in 1984. Carvey also participated in a couple of TV shows, “One of the Boys” (1982) and “Blue Thunder” (1984), before receiving the phone call that would have changed his career and his life: in 1986 Lorne Michaels asked him to play in the “Saturday Night Live”, and Carvey will remain in this show till the 1993 (starring in some other single episodes even in 1994, 1996, 2000, and 2011).

Carvey had been a guest in “The Larry Sanders Show” (3 appearances in 1992, 1993, and 1997), and in 1996 he got his own programs “The Dana Carvey Show”, where he was the host, and where he impersonated various characters from SNL as well. He starred in many other shows, among which there are the “Dana Carvey: Critics’ Choice (a stand-up special in 1995 dedicated to himself), “Just Shoot Me!” (1998), “LateLine” (2 episodes, one in 1998 and one in 1999), “The Fairly OddParents” (2010), “Spoof” (2010), “Good Vibes” (2011), “Live with Kelly” (2012), “Rich and Morty” (2013), “The Birthday Boys” (2014), “First Impressions” (2016), and “Dana Carvey: Straight White Male, 60” (another stand-up special dedicated to himself in 2016),

Carvey has been very active even on the big screen. After the first small roles at the start of his career, he participated in “Tough Guys” (1986), “Moving (1988), “Opportunity Knocks” (1990), in the two cult movies “Wayne’s World” (1992) and “Wayne’s World 2” (1993) in which he portrayed the character of Garth Algar, always in tandem with Mike Myers from Saturday Night Live.

Carvery has been in “Clean Slate” (1994), "The Road to Wellville" (1994), "Trapped in Paradise" (1994), "The Shot" (1996), "Fire on the Track: The Steve Prefontaine Story" (1996), and "Little Nicky" (2000).

In 2002 Carvey played in the comedy spy movie "The Master of Disguise". The movie was released just a week after the movie of his former colleague Mike Myers’ “Austin Powers iin Goldmember”, and, despite the two movies were very similar as a genre, Carvey didn’t have the same success that Myers had.

Carvey’s other movies are "Presidential Reunion" (2010, in which he played the role of the President George H. W. Bush), "Jack and Jill" (2011), "Hotel Transylvania 2" (2015), "The Secret Life of Pets" (2016), "Sandy Wexler" (2017), "Becoming Bond" (2017), "Too Funny to Fail" (2017).