To most, Aziz Ansari is best-known for his role as Tom Haverford on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation.”

That show, which debuted in 2009, has recently been getting stronger reviews than when it premiered, and has also been building more solid ratings.

But Ansari has many other irons in the fire. He actually started out as a stand-up comic, and he still does the stand-up circuit when the show’s shooting schedule allows like next week, when he comes to the Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase on Monday for two sold-out shows.

He’s also made some inroads on the big screen, most notably in the Judd Apatow film “Funny People,” which starred Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, but featured Ansari as the wound-up comic Randy Springs. That character made such an impression that Ansari went on to make a series of videos as the “Randy” comic, most of which were centered around profanely funny material.

Ansari has also done sharply funny turns in films like “I Love You, Man,” “Get Him to the Greek,” and “Observe and Report” and has done voices for the movies “Ice Age: The Continental Drift” due out in 2012, and “What’s Your Number” due out this year.

In addition, Ansari gained notoriety for his really profane “depiction” of Mary-Kate Olsen in the tastelessly funny “Will Arnett Sex Tape” episode of the short-lived “Human Giant” sketch-comedy show on MTV.

Needless to say, Ansari has earned a big part of his comic reputation by being outrageous.

That was evident on first stand-up DVD, released last year—the similarly profane and black-humored “Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening.” In that performance, Ansari definitely pushed the envelope, doing a fair number of rape jokes.

He also sarcastically insulted MTV, particularly the show “Next,” which he clearly hates. Other targets were hipsters and Facebook / Twitter addicts, and one particularly unhinged bit was his re-creation of an R. Kelly club appearance. His amped-up “Randy” character from “Funny People” also made a twisted appearance.

Ansari has an unusual background for a comic who often trades in material that has been described as “deviant” and “filthy”: He was born a Muslim Tamil—in South Carolina, no less. While he was a funny kid, and liked making his friends and family laugh, being a comic was never something he seriously considered as a career.

“In South Carolina, having a career meant being a doctor or a lawyer,” Ansari told the Toronto Star. “Saying you wanted to be an actor or comedian was like saying you wanted to go to Mars.”

He moved to Manhattan after graduating from high school, enrolled in NYU as a business major, and, while in NY, took his first stab at stand-up. “My friends would say, ‘Dude, you’re funny. You ought to do stand-up.’ And so I gave it a try.”

He later joined the Upright Citizens Brigade, the well-known New York comedy troupe that has also featured Amy Poehler and Horatio Sanz, among others. After that, things began happening for him fast. In 2005, Rolling Stone listed him as one of the hot stand-ups of the year, and he won the Jury Award at the U.S. Comedy Festival. He then landed his first TV gig on “Human Giant.”

He moved to Los Angeles, snagged his first film role, in “School for Scoundrels” and then got the attention of directors and producers with four-episode stint on “Scrubs” as an intern who was fixated on his cell phone. As his reputation grew, he was one of the first actors cast for “Parks and Recreation.”

On that show, his character, Tom Haverford, is also cast as a South Carolina native—one who seems to have a gift for making broad, ignorant comments on just about any subject one can imagine.

Ansari has cracked that he might actually have become Tom Haverford if he’d never left South Carolina.

The Haverford character is actually in Ansari’s comic sweet spot, because he seems to have honed a knack for playing characters who are obnoxious, even insufferable, in one way or another. Indeed, one magazine profile of him was titled, “The Rise of the Likeable Jerk.”

But that just rolled off of Ansari’s back.

“That’s a skill, man,” Ansari told the Star. “I’m able to take characters who are like total d---s, that you’d never want to hang out with, and make them funny, maybe even sympathetic.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music and comedy for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.

Aziz Ansari on "Ellen":