The James Joyce Award is an award given by the Literary and Historical Society (L&H;) of University College Dublin (UCD) for those who have achieved outstanding success in their given field. It is named after one of the society's alumni, James Joyce, the author of Dubliners, Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Finnegans Wake.

Joyce and the L&H;

Joyce was an a student in UCD from 1898 to 1903, where he studied modern languages. In 1900, he presented a paper "Drama and Life" to the society. He also ran for the top position of auditor twice, but failed to be elected on both occasions.

Some past recipients of the Award

Actors

Russell Brand (2008) - Actor and Comedian

Rory Bremner - British satirist

Aaron Eckhart - Actor

Will Ferrell - Comedian and actor

Musicians

Roger Daltrey - Lead singer of British rock band The Who

Sir George Martin - Producer of The Beatles

Political figures

Hans Blix - Former Chief UN Weapons inspector

Robin Cook - British politician

F.W. de Klerk - Former South African President

George Galloway - British politician

John Howard - Former Australian Prime Minister

John Hume - Nobel Laureate and Northern Irish politician

Jesse Jackson - US Civil Rights Advocate

Governor Brian Schweitzer - Governor of Montana

Scientists and academics

Noam Chomsky - Academic and theorist

John Nash - Nobel Laureate and mathematician

Johan Norberg - Swedish historian and writer

Richard Swinburne - British philosopher

Steven Weinberg - Physicist

Gabriele Veneziano - Physicist

Sportspeople

Gary Lineker - Television host and former England soccer captain

Niall Quinn - Irish international football player and Sunderland FC Chairman

Writers

Bill Bryson - Writer

JK Rowling - Writer of the Harry Potter series

DBC Pierre - Writer and Booker Prize winner

Sir Salman Rushdie - Writer and Booker Prize winner

Sue Townsend - Writer

Yu Hua - Writer

References

Category:Irish literary awards

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark novel which perfected his stream of consciousness technique and combined nearly every literary device available in a modern re-telling of The Odyssey. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939), and his complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.

Joyce was born to a lower-middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College, Dublin. In his early twenties he emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend beyond Dublin, and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”

1882–1904: Dublin

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on 2 February 1882 to John Stanislaus Joyce and Mary Jane Murray in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar. He was the eldest of ten surviving children; two of his siblings died of typhoid. His father's family, originally from Fermoy in Cork, had once owned a small salt and lime works. Joyce's father and paternal grandfather both married into wealthy families. In 1887, his father was appointed rate collector (i.e., a collector of local property taxes) by Dublin Corporation; the family subsequently moved to the fashionable adjacent small town of Bray from Dublin. Around this time Joyce was attacked by a dog, which engendered in him a lifelong cynophobia. He also suffered from keraunophobia, as his deeply religious aunt had described thunderstorms to him as a sign of God's wrath.

In 1891, Joyce wrote a poem, Et Tu Healy on the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. His father was angry at the treatment of Parnell by the Catholic church and at the resulting failure to secure Home Rule for Ireland. The elder Joyce had the poem printed and even sent a part to the Vatican Library. In November of that same year, John Joyce was entered in Stubbs Gazette (an official register of bankruptcies) and suspended from work. In 1893, John Joyce was dismissed with a pension, beginning the family's slide into poverty caused mainly by John's drinking and general financial mismanagement.

James Joyce began his education at Clongowes Wood College, a Jesuit boarding school near Clane in County Kildare, which he entered in 1888 but had to leave in 1892 when his father could no longer pay the fees. Joyce then studied at home and briefly at the Christian Brothers school on North Richmond Street, Dublin, before he was offered a place in the Jesuits', Dublin school, Belvedere College, in 1893. The offer reflected, at least in part, the hope that he would prove to have a vocation and join the Order. Joyce, however, apparently rejected Catholicism by the age of 16, although the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas continued to influence him strongly throughout his life. L. A. G. Strong, William T. Noon, Robert Boyle and others have argued that Joyce, later in life, reconciled with the faith he rejected earlier in life and that his parting with the faith was succeeded by a not so obvious reunion, and that Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are essentially Catholic expressions. Likewise, Hugh Kenner and T.S. Eliot saw between the lines of Joyce’s work the outlook of a serious Christian and that beneath the veneer of the work lies a remnant of Catholic belief and attitude. Kevin Sullivan maintains that, rather than reconciling with the faith, Joyce never left it. Critics holding this view insist that Stephen is not Joyce. Eamonn Hughes maintains that Joyce takes a dialectic approach, both assenting and denying, saying that Steven’s much noted non serviam is qualified - “I will not serve that which I no longer believe…”, and that the non serviam will always be balanced by Stephen’s “I am a servant…” and Molly’s “yes”.

He enrolled at the recently established University College Dublin (UCD) in 1898, studying English, French, and Italian. He also became active in theatrical and literary circles in the city. In 1900 his review of Ibsen's New Drama was published in Fortnightly Review; it was his first publication and he received a note of thanks from the Norwegian dramatist himself. Joyce wrote a number of other articles and at least two plays (since lost) during this period. Many of the friends he made at University College Dublin would appear as characters in Joyce's written works.

In 1901, the National Census of Ireland lists James Joyce (19) as a scholar living with his mother and father, six sisters and three brothers at Royal Terrace, Clontarf, Dublin.

, Dublin]] After graduating from UCD in 1903, Joyce left for Paris to study medicine, but he soon abandoned this after finding the technical lectures in French too difficult. He stayed on for a few months, appealing for finance his family could ill afford and reading late in the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, his father sent a telegraph which read, "NOTHER [sic] DYING COME HOME FATHER". Joyce returned to Ireland. Fearing for her son's impiety, his mother tried unsuccessfully to get Joyce to make his confession and to take communion. She finally passed into a coma and died on 13 August, James and Stanislaus having refused to kneel with other members of the family praying at her bedside. After her death he continued to drink heavily, and conditions at home grew quite appalling. He scraped a living reviewing books, teaching and singing—he was an accomplished tenor, and won the bronze medal in the 1904 Feis Ceoil.

On 7 January 1904 he attempted to publish A Portrait of the Artist, an essay-story dealing with aesthetics, only to have it rejected from the free-thinking magazine Dana. He decided, on his twenty-second birthday, to revise the story into a novel he called Stephen Hero. It was a fictional rendering of Joyce's youth, but he eventually grew frustrated with its direction and abandoned this work. It was never published in this form, but years later, in Trieste, Joyce completely rewrote it as A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The unfinished Stephen Hero was published after his death.

The same year he met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Connemara, County Galway who was working as a chambermaid. On 16 June 1904, they first stepped out together, an event which would be commemorated by providing the date for the action of Ulysses.

Joyce remained in Dublin for some time longer, drinking heavily. After one of these drinking binges, he got into a fight over a misunderstanding with a man in Phoenix Park; he was picked up and dusted off by a minor acquaintance of his father's, Alfred H. Hunter, who brought him into his home to tend to his injuries. Hunter was rumored to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, and would serve as one of the models for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of Ulysses. He took up with medical student Oliver St John Gogarty, who formed the basis for the character Buck Mulligan in Ulysses. After staying in Gogarty's Martello Tower for six nights he left in the middle of the night following an altercation which involved Gogarty shooting a pistol at some pans hanging directly over Joyce's bed. He walked all the way back to Dublin to stay with relatives for the night, and sent a friend to the tower the next day to pack his trunk. Shortly thereafter he eloped to the continent with Nora.

1904–20: Trieste and Zurich

Joyce and Nora went into self-imposed exile, moving first to Zurich, where he had supposedly acquired a post to teach English at the Berlitz Language School through an agent in England. It turned out that the English agent had been swindled, but the director of the school sent him on to Trieste, which was part of Austria-Hungary until World War I (today part of Italy). Once again, he found there was no position for him, but with the help of Almidano Artifoni, director of the Trieste Berlitz school, he finally secured a teaching position in Pola, then also part of Austria-Hungary (today part of Croatia). He stayed there, teaching English mainly to Austro-Hungarian naval officers stationed at the Pola base, from October 1904 until March 1905, when the Austrians—having discovered an espionage ring in the city—expelled all aliens. With Artifoni's help, he moved back to Trieste and began teaching English there. He would remain in Trieste for most of the next ten years.

Later that year Nora gave birth to their first child, George. Joyce then managed to talk his brother, Stanislaus, into joining him in Trieste, and secured him a position teaching at the school. James's ostensible reasons were desire for Stanislaus's company and the hope of offering him a more interesting life than that of his simple clerking job in Dublin. In truth, though, James hoped to augment his family's meagre income with his brother's earnings. Stanislaus and James had strained relations throughout the time they lived together in Trieste, with most arguments centering on James's drinking habits and frivolity with money.

With the chronic wanderlust of James's early years, he became frustrated with life in Trieste and moved to Rome in late 1906, having secured employment in a bank. He intensely disliked Rome, and moved back to Trieste in early 1907. His daughter Lucia was born in the summer of the same year.

Joyce returned to Dublin in mid-1909 with George, in order to visit his father and work on getting Dubliners published. He visited Nora's family in Galway, meeting them for the first time (a successful visit, to his relief). He also launched Ireland's first cinema, the Volta Cinematograph, with backing from his Italian friends. While preparing to return to Trieste he decided to take one of his sisters, Eva, back with him to help Nora run the home. He spent only a month in Trieste before returning to Dublin, this time as a representative of some cinema owners hoping to set up a regular cinema in Dublin. The venture was successful (but quickly fell apart in Joyce's absence), and he returned to Trieste in January 1910 with another sister, Eileen, in tow. Eva became very homesick for Dublin and returned there a few years later, but Eileen spent the rest of her life on the continent, eventually marrying Czech bank cashier Frantisek Schaurek.

Joyce returned to Dublin again briefly in mid-1912 during his years-long fight with his Dublin publisher, George Roberts, over the publication of Dubliners. His trip was once again fruitless, and on his return he wrote the poem "Gas from a Burner" as an invective against Roberts. After this trip, he never again came closer to Dublin than London, despite many pleas from his father and invitations from fellow Irish writer William Butler Yeats.

One of his students in Trieste was Ettore Schmitz, better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo. They met in 1907 and became lasting friends and mutual critics. Schmitz was a Catholic of Jewish origin and became the primary model for Leopold Bloom; most of the details about the Jewish faith in Ulysses came from Schmitz's responses to queries from Joyce. While living in Trieste, Joyce was first beset with eye problems that ultimately required over a dozen surgeries.

Joyce concocted a number of money-making schemes during this period, including an attempt to become a cinema magnate in Dublin. He also frequently discussed but ultimately abandoned a plan to import Irish tweeds to Trieste. Correspondence relating to that venture with the Irish Woollen Mills are displayed in the windows of their premises on Aston's Quay in Dublin. His skill at borrowing money saved him from indigence. What income he had came partially from his position at the Berlitz school and partially from teaching private students.

an Limmat rivers in Zurich where Joyce loved to relax]]

In 1915, after most of his students were conscripted in Trieste for World War I, he moved to Zurich. Two influential private students, Baron Ambriogo Railli and Count Francesco Sordina, petitioned officials for an exit permit for the Joyces, who in turn agreed not to take any action against the emperor of Austria-Hungary during the war. There, he met one of his most enduring and important friends, Frank Budgen, whose opinion Joyce constantly sought through the writing of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. It was also here where Ezra Pound brought him to the attention of English feminist and publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver, who would become Joyce's patron, providing him thousands of pounds over the next 25 years and relieving him of the burden of teaching in order to focus on his writing. While in Zurich he wrote Exiles, published A Portrait..., and began serious work on Ulysses. Zurich during the war was home to exiles and artists from across Europe, and its bohemian, multilingual atmosphere suited him. Nevertheless, after four years he was restless, and after the war he returned to Trieste as he had originally planned. He found the city had changed, and some of his old friends noted his maturing from teacher to full-time artist. His relations with his brother (who had been interned in an Austrian prison camp for most of the war due to his pro-Italian politics) were more strained than ever. Joyce headed to Paris in 1920 at an invitation from Ezra Pound, supposedly for a week, but he ended up living there for the next twenty years.

1920–41: Paris and Zurich

.]]

Joyce set himself to finally finishing Ulysses in Paris, delighted to find that he was gradually gaining fame as an avant-garde writer. A further grant from Miss Shaw Weaver meant he could devote himself full-time to writing again, as well as consort with other literary figures in the city. During this era, Joyce's eyes began to give him more and more problems. He was treated by Dr Louis Borsch in Paris, receiving nine surgeries from him until Borsch's death in 1929. Throughout the 1930s he traveled frequently to Switzerland for eye surgeries and treatments for Lucia, who, according to the Joyces, suffered from schizophrenia. Lucia was analysed by Carl Jung at the time, who after reading Ulysses, concluded that her father had schizophrenia. Jung said she and her father were two people heading to the bottom of a river, except that he was diving and she was falling.

In Paris, Maria and Eugene Jolas nursed Joyce during his long years of writing Finnegans Wake. Were it not for their unwavering support (along with Harriet Shaw Weaver's constant financial support), there is a good possibility that his books might never have been finished or published. In their now legendary literary magazine "transition," the Jolases published serially various sections of Joyce's novel under the title Work in Progress. He returned to Zurich in late 1940, fleeing the Nazi occupation of France.

On 11 January 1941, he underwent surgery for a perforated ulcer. While at first improved, he relapsed the following day, and despite several transfusions, fell into a coma. He awoke at 2 a.m. on 13 January 1941, and asked for a nurse to call his wife and son before losing consciousness again. They were still on their way, when he died, 15 minutes later. He is buried in the Fluntern Cemetery within earshot of the lions in the Zurich Zoo.

Although two senior Irish diplomats were in Switzerland at the time, neither attended Joyce's funeral, and the Irish government subsequently declined Nora's offer to permit the repatriation of Joyce's remains. Nora, whom Joyce had finally married in London in 1931, survived him by 10 years. She is buried now by his side, as is their son George, who died in 1976. Ellmann reports that when the arrangements for Joyce's burial were being made, a Catholic priest tried to convince Nora that there should be a funeral Mass. She replied, "I couldn't do that to him." Swiss tenor Max Meili sang Addio terra, addio cielo from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the funeral service.

Major works

Dubliners

Joyce's Irish experiences constitute an essential element of his writings, and provide all of the settings for his fiction and much of its subject matter. His early volume of short stories, Dubliners, is a penetrating analysis of the stagnation and paralysis of Dublin society. The stories incorporate epiphanies, a word used particularly by Joyce, by which he meant a sudden consciousness of the "soul" of a thing. The final and most famous story in the collection, "The Dead", was directed by John Huston as his last feature film in 1987.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a nearly complete rewrite of the abandoned novel Stephen Hero. Joyce attempted to burn the original manuscript in a fit of rage during an argument with Nora, though to his subsequent relief it was rescued by his sister. A Künstlerroman, Portrait is a heavily autobiographical coming-of-age novel depicting the childhood and adolescence of protagonist Stephen Dedalus and his gradual growth into artistic self-consciousness. Some hints of the techniques Joyce frequently employed in later works, such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings, are evident throughout this novel. Joseph Strick directed a film of the book in 1977 starring Luke Johnston, Bosco Hogan, T.P. McKenna and John Gielgud.

Exiles and poetry

Despite early interest in the theatre, Joyce published only one play, Exiles, begun shortly after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and published in 1918. A study of a husband and wife relationship, the play looks back to The Dead (the final story in Dubliners) and forward to Ulysses, which Joyce began around the time of the play's composition.

Joyce also published a number of books of poetry. His first mature published work was the satirical broadside "The Holy Office" (1904), in which he proclaimed himself to be the superior of many prominent members of the Celtic revival. His first full-length poetry collection Chamber Music (referring, Joyce explained, to the sound of urine hitting the side of a chamber pot) consisted of 36 short lyrics. This publication led to his inclusion in the Imagist Anthology, edited by Ezra Pound, who was a champion of Joyce's work. Other poetry Joyce published in his lifetime includes "Gas From A Burner" (1912), Pomes Penyeach (1927) and "Ecce Puer" (written in 1932 to mark the birth of his grandson and the recent death of his father). It was published by the Black Sun Press in Collected Poems (1936).

Ulysses

As he was completing work on Dubliners in 1906, Joyce considered adding another story featuring a Jewish advertising canvasser called Leopold Bloom under the title Ulysses. Although he did not pursue the idea further at the time, he eventually commenced work on a novel using both the title and basic premise in 1914. The writing was completed in October, 1921. Three more months were devoted to working on the proofs of the book before Joyce halted work shortly before his self-imposed deadline, his 40th birthday (2 February 1922).

Thanks to Ezra Pound, serial publication of the novel in the magazine The Little Review began in 1918. This magazine was edited by Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, with the backing of John Quinn, a New York attorney with an interest in contemporary experimental art and literature. Unfortunately, this publication encountered censorship problems in the United States; serialization was halted in 1920 when the editors were convicted of publishing obscenity. The novel was not published in the United States until 1933.

At least partly because of this controversy, Joyce found it difficult to get a publisher to accept the book, but it was published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach from her well-known Rive Gauche bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. An English edition published the same year by Joyce's patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, ran into further difficulties with the United States authorities, and 500 copies that were shipped to the States were seized and possibly destroyed. The following year, John Rodker produced a print run of 500 more intended to replace the missing copies, but these were burned by English customs at Folkestone. A further consequence of the novel's ambiguous legal status as a banned book was that a number of "bootleg" versions appeared, most notably a number of pirate versions from the publisher Samuel Roth. In 1928, a court injunction against Roth was obtained and he ceased publication.

With the appearance of both Ulysses and T. S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land, 1922 was a key year in the history of English-language literary modernism. In Ulysses, Joyce employs stream of consciousness, parody, jokes, and virtually every other established literary technique to present his characters. The action of the novel, which takes place in a single day, 16 June 1904, sets the characters and incidents of the Odyssey of Homer in modern Dublin and represents Odysseus (Ulysses), Penelope and Telemachus in the characters of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, parodically contrasted with their lofty models. The book explores various areas of Dublin life, dwelling on its squalor and monotony. Nevertheless, the book is also an affectionately detailed study of the city, and Joyce claimed that if Dublin were to be destroyed in some catastrophe it could be rebuilt, brick by brick, using his work as a model. In order to achieve this level of accuracy, Joyce used the 1904 edition of Thom's Directory—a work that listed the owners and/or tenants of every residential and commercial property in the city. He also bombarded friends still living there with requests for information and clarification. and Adrienne Monnier at Shakespeare & Co., Paris, 1920]] The book consists of 18 chapters, each covering roughly one hour of the day, beginning around 8 a.m. and ending some time after 2 a.m. the following morning. Each chapter employs its own literary style, and parodies a specific episode in Homer's Odyssey. Furthermore, each chapter is associated with a specific colour, art or science, and bodily organ. This combination of kaleidoscopic writing with an extreme formal schematic structure renders the book a major contribution to the development of 20th-century modernist literature. The use of classical mythology as an organizing framework, the near-obsessive focus on external detail, and the occurrence of significant action within the minds of characters have also contributed to the development of literary modernism. Nevertheless, Joyce complained that, "I may have oversystematised Ulysses," and played down the mythic correspondences by eliminating the chapter titles that had been taken from Homer.

Finnegans Wake

, issued 1993–2002]] Having completed work on Ulysses, Joyce was so exhausted that he did not write a line of prose for a year. On 10 March 1923 he informed a patron, Harriet Weaver: "Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final Yes of Ulysses. Having found a pen, with some difficulty I copied them out in a large handwriting on a double sheet of foolscap so that I could read them. Il lupo perde il pelo ma non il vizio, the Italians say. The wolf may lose his skin but not his vice or the leopard cannot change his spots". Thus was born a text that became known, first, as Work in Progress and later Finnegans Wake.

By 1926 Joyce had completed the first two parts of the book. In that year, he met Eugene and Maria Jolas who offered to serialise the book in their magazine transition. For the next few years, Joyce worked rapidly on the new book, but in the 1930s, progress slowed considerably. This was due to a number of factors, including the death of his father in 1931, concern over the mental health of his daughter Lucia and his own health problems, including failing eyesight. Much of the work was done with the assistance of younger admirers, including Samuel Beckett. For some years, Joyce nursed the eccentric plan of turning over the book to his friend James Stephens to complete, on the grounds that Stephens was born in the same hospital as Joyce exactly one week later, and shared the first name of both Joyce and of Joyce's fictional alter-ego (this is one example of Joyce's numerous superstitions).

Reaction to the work was mixed, including negative comment from early supporters of Joyce's work, such as Pound and the author's brother Stanislaus Joyce. In order to counteract this hostile reception, a book of essays by supporters of the new work, including Beckett, William Carlos Williams and others was organised and published in 1929 under the title Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress. At his 47th birthday party at the Jolases' home, Joyce revealed the final title of the work and Finnegans Wake was published in book form on 4 May 1939. Later, further negative comments surfaced from doctor and author Hervey Cleckley, who questioned the significance others had placed on the work. In his book, The Mask of Sanity, Hervey Cleckley, M.D. refers to Finnegans Wake as "a 628-page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital."

Joyce's method of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations was pushed to the limit in Finnegans Wake, which abandoned all conventions of plot and character construction and is written in a peculiar and obscure language, based mainly on complex multi-level puns. This approach is similar to, but far more extensive than that used by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky. This has led many readers and critics to apply Joyce's oft-quoted description in the Wake of Ulysses as his "usylessly unreadable Blue Book of Eccles" to the Wake itself. However, readers have been able to reach a consensus about the central cast of characters and general plot.

Much of the wordplay in the book stems from the use of multilingual puns which draw on a wide range of languages. The role played by Beckett and other assistants included collating words from these languages on cards for Joyce to use and, as Joyce's eyesight worsened, of writing the text from the author's dictation.

The view of history propounded in this text is very strongly influenced by Giambattista Vico, and the metaphysics of Giordano Bruno of Nola are important to the interplay of the "characters". Vico propounded a cyclical view of history, in which civilisation rose from chaos, passed through theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic phases, and then lapsed back into chaos. The most obvious example of the influence of Vico's cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening and closing words of the book. Finnegans Wake opens with the words "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." ("vicus" is a pun on Vico) and ends "A way a lone a last a loved a long the". In other words, the book ends with the beginning of a sentence and begins with the end of the same sentence, turning the book into one great cycle. Indeed, Joyce said that the ideal reader of the Wake would suffer from "ideal insomnia" and, on completing the book, would turn to page one and start again, and so on in an endless cycle of reading.

Legacy

Joyce's work has been subject to intense scrutiny by scholars of all types. He has also been an important influence on writers and scholars as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, Flann O'Brien, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Salman Rushdie, Robert Anton Wilson, John Updike, and Joseph Campbell. Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire [Modernist] movement".

Some scholars, most notably Vladimir Nabokov, have mixed feelings on his work, often championing some of his fiction while condemning other works. In Nabokov's opinion, Ulysses was brilliant, Finnegans Wake horrible—an attitude Jorge Luis Borges shared. In recent years, literary theory has embraced Joyce's innovation and ambition.

Joyce's influence is also evident in fields other than literature. The phrase "Three Quarks for Muster Mark" in Joyce's Finnegans Wake is often called the source of the physicists' word "quark", the name of one of the main kinds of elementary particles, proposed by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida has written a book on the use of language in Ulysses, and the American philosopher Donald Davidson has written similarly on Finnegans Wake in comparison with Lewis Carroll. Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan used Joyce's writings to explain his concept of the sinthome. According to Lacan, Joyce's writing is the supplementary cord which kept Joyce from psychosis.

The work and life of Joyce is celebrated annually on 16 June, Bloomsday, in Dublin and in an increasing number of cities worldwide.

In 1999, Time Magazine named Joyce one of the , and stated; "Joyce ... revolutionized 20th century fiction". In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Ulysses No. 1, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man No. 3, and Finnegans Wake No. 77, on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Works

Chamber Music (1907, poems)

Dubliners (1914, short-story collection)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916, novel)

Exiles (1918, play)

Ulysses (1922, novel)

Pomes Penyeach (1927, poems)

Collected Poems (1936, poems)

Finnegans Wake (1939, novel)

;Posthumous publications

Stephen Hero (precursor to A Portrait; written 1904–06, published 1944)

Giacomo Joyce (written 1907, published 1968)

Letters of James Joyce Vol. 1 (Ed. Stuart Gilbert, 1957)

The Critical Writings of James Joyce (Eds. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellman, 1959)

Letters of James Joyce Vol. 2 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)

Letters of James Joyce Vol. 3 (Ed. Richard Ellman, 1966)

Notes

References

Beebe, Maurice (Fall 1972). "Ulysses and the Age of Modernism". James Joyce Quarterly (University of Tulsa) 10 (1): 172–88

Borges, Jorge Luis, (ed.) Eliot Weinberger, Borges: Selected Non-Fictions, Penguin (31 October 2000). ISBN 0140290117.

Bulson, Eric. The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-5218-4037-8.

Cavanaugh, Tim, "Ulysses Unbound: Why does a book so bad it "defecates on your bed" still have so many admirers?", reason, July 2004.

Deming, Robert H. James Joyce: The Critical Heritage. Routledge, 1997.

Ellmann, Richard, James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1959, revised edition 1982. ISBN 0195031032.

Gluck, Barbara Reich. Beckett and Joyce: Friendship and Fiction. Bucknell University Press, 1979.

Hopper, Keith, Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist, Cork University Press (May 1995). ISBN 1859180426.

Joyce, Stanislaus, My Brother's Keeper, New York: Viking Press, 1969.

MacBride, Margaret. Ulysses and the Metamorphosis of Stephen Dedalus. Bucknell University Press, 2001.

McCourt, John, The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 1904–1920, The Lilliput Press, May 2001. ISBN 1901866718.

McCourt, John, ed. James Joyce in Context. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-5218-8662-8.

Pepper, Tara. "Portrait of the Daughter: Two works seek to reclaim the legacy of Lucia Joyce." Newsweek International . 8 March 2003.

Shloss, Carol Loeb. Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004. ISBN 0-374-19424-6.

Williamson, Edwin, Borges: A Life, Viking Adult (5 August 2004). ISBN 0670885797.

Further reading

Burgess, Anthony, Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader, Faber & Faber (1965); (published in America as Re Joyce) ASIN B000KW9R3Y; Hamlyn Paperbacks; Rev. ed edition (1982). ISBN 0600206734.

Burgess, Anthony, Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce (1973), Harcourt (March 1975). ISBN 0156465612.

Clark, Hilary, The Fictional Encyclopaedia: Joyce, Pound, Sollers. Taylor & Francis, 1990.

Gravgaard, Anna-Katarina Could Leopold Bloom Read Ulysses?, University of Copenhagen, 2006.

Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. ISBN 0-413-69120-9.

Levin, Harry (ed. with introduction and notes). The Essential James Joyce. Cape, 1948. Revised edition Penguin in association with Jonathan Cape, 1963.

Levin, Harry, James Joyce. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1941 (1960).

Max, D. J., "The Injustice Collector", The New Yorker, 19 June 2006.

Quillian, William H. Hamlet and the new poetic: James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983.

Read, Forrest. Pound/Joyce: The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound's Essays on Joyce. New Directions, 1967.

Special issue on James Joyce, In-between: Essays & Studies in Literary Criticism, Vol. 12, 2003. [Articles]

Irish Writers on Writing featuring James Joyce. Edited by Eavan Boland (Trinity University Press, 2007).

External links

An Audio tour of the history of James Joyce's writings

Bibliography of Joycean Scholarship and Literary Criticism

Music in the Works of James Joyce

James Joyce Centre (Dublin)

The James Joyce Scholars' Collection from the University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center.

Annoted Ulysses, marked up version of Ulysses.

James Joyce from Dublin to Ithaca Exhibition from the collections of Cornell University

Gisèle Freund Photographs of James Joyce in Paris at University of Victoria, Special Collections

Category:1882 births Category:1941 deaths Category:Alumni of University College Dublin Category:English as a Second Language teachers Category:Irish expatriates in Austria-Hungary Category:Irish expatriates in Croatia Category:Irish expatriates in France Category:Irish expatriates in Italy Category:Irish expatriates in Switzerland Category:Irish novelists Category:Irish poets Category:Irish short story writers Category:People from County Dublin Category:19th-century Irish people Category:Old Clongownians Category:Roman Catholic writers

Edward John "Eddie" Izzard (born 7 February 1962) is an English stand-up comedian, actor and voice-over artist. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime.

Izzard's works include stand-up sets Unrepeatable, Definite Article, Glorious, Dress to Kill, Circle, Sexie and Stripped. He had a starring role in the television series The Riches as Wayne Malloy and has appeared in many motion pictures such as Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Mystery Men, The Cat's Meow, Across the Universe, and Valkyrie.

He has cited his main comedy role model as Monty Python, and John Cleese once referred to him as the "Lost Python". He is also known for his transvestism.

In 2009 he completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief in spite of having no prior history of long distance running.

Early life

Izzard was born in Aden, Yemen, then the Colony of Aden in the Aden Protectorate. He was the youngest son of British parents Dorothy Ella, a midwife and nurse, and Harold John Izzard, an accountant who was working in Aden with British Petroleum. A year after his birth, the family moved to Bangor in Northern Ireland and lived there until he was five. The family then moved to Skewen in South Wales. Within a year, his mother fell ill and died of cancer in March 1968. Izzard was six and his brother Mark was eight. Following his mother's death, Izzard attended St John's School in Porthcawl, St Bede's Preparatory School, and Eastbourne College.

Early career

Izzard began to toy with comedy at the University of Sheffield with partner and friend Rob Ballard. After leaving his accountancy degree course, they took their act to the streets, often in Covent Garden. After his split with Ballard, Izzard spent a great deal of the early 1980s working as a street performer in Europe and the United States, Izzard moved his act into the stand-up comedy venues of Britain. After his first solo apperance at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987, where he met then partner and actress Sarah Townsend, in the same year made his first appearance at The Comedy Store, London. He refined his material throughout the 1980s and in the early 1990s, in part at his own club "Raging Bull" in Soho, he finally began earning some measure of recognition through his edgy improvisation.

Success as a comedian

In 1991, Izzard got a spot on the Fry and Laurie produced AIDS benefit Hysteria 3, where he did his "Wolves" sketch, which broke him into the mainstream comedy circuit and television. His resultant stand-up work brought him British Comedy Awards in 1993 (for Live at the Ambassadors), a part in "Filth" which was a stand up presentation by left-wing sympathetic comedians in aid of raising money for the Terence Higgins Trust in 1994, and 1996 (for Definite Article).

In 1996, he got a part in his first United States-produced film, The Secret Agent, where he met and befriended Robin Williams. Williams already knew of Izzard's act, and discussed bringing his act to the United States. As a result, Izzard took Definite Article on a successful stint in New York City in the same year, and as a support act to Williams took Dress to Kill to San Francisco in 1998. His U.S. breakthrough came in 1999, when Dress to Kill was shown on the American television channel HBO, about a year or so after he performed the show on tour in the USA, UK and France. Suddenly, America was aware of Izzard, and the show went on to earn him two Emmy Awards in 2000 (for performance and writing).

In 1999, after complaints that his act recycled jokes appearing on his DVDs, the BBC's consumer programme Watchdog investigated Izzard's live act. Izzard explained that like most comedy performers, he used some of his most successful routines in each show. Nonetheless, Izzard was issued a warning by the Department of Trade and Industry. Since then, Izzard has rarely performed his stand-up act on television, saying that it uses up material at too high a rate, whereas stage material can be continually re-used in front of different audiences for several months.

In 2005, Izzard used his rambling style to provide the voice-over for the British government's television advertisements promoting recycling. The tagline of the ads was "Recycle. The possibilities are endless!" Izzard also performed on stage with Scottish musician Midge Ure at Live8 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He played the piano on the song "Vienna".

In January 2006, the U.S. television network FX announced the production of a new drama series called The Riches (formerly Low Life). Izzard and British actress Minnie Driver star as a married couple, Wayne and Dahlia Malloy, who have been part of a caravan of con-artist Irish travellers swindling their way across the U.S. with their children. After finding another family killed in a car accident, the Malloys assume their identities and start a new life as law-abiding suburbanites in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The youngest son has shown a preference for wearing girls' clothing, leading to some speculation that the role was based upon Izzard's experiences. Izzard has stated in several interviews that the character of Sam had been given transvestite tendencies long before he was cast as Wayne Malloy, but he has contributed his perspective to keep the character believable.

Theatrical, TV and film appearances

In 1994, Izzard made his West End drama debut as the lead in the world premiere of David Mamet's The Cryptogram with Lindsay Duncan, in the production at London's Comedy Theatre. The success of that role led to his second starring role in David Beaird's black comedy 900 Oneonta. In 1995, he portrayed the title character in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II.

In 1998 Izzard appeared briefly on stage with the Monty Python team in The American Film Institute's Tribute to Monty Python (also referred to as Monty Python Live at Aspen). He walked on stage with the five surviving Pythons and he was summarily escorted off by Eric Idle and Michael Palin as he attempted to participate in a discussion about how the group got together.

Izzard portrayed comedian Lenny Bruce in the 1999 production of Julian Barry's 1971 play Lenny. In 2001, he replaced Clive Owen in Peter Nichols' 1967 play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at the Comedy Theatre. Izzard and Victoria Hamilton then repeated their lead roles when the show was brought to Broadway in 2003, with The Roundabout Theatre Company production. The revival received four Tony Award nominations including Best Revival of a Play, Best Leading Actor and Actress for its stars Izzard and Hamilton in their Broadway debuts, and Best Direction for Laurence Boswell.

Izzard has appeared in numerous films, starting with 1996's The Secret Agent. He has appeared as several real-life individuals, including Charlie Chaplin in The Cat's Meow, actor Gustav von Wangenheim in Shadow of the Vampire and General Erich Fellgiebel in Valkyrie. Other roles have included Mr. Kite in Across the Universe, Lussurioso in Revengers Tragedy and criminal expert Roman Nagel in Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen. Voice work has included the titular It in Five Children and It, Nigel in The Wild and the mouse warrior Reepicheep in . He said in 2009 that he would not be reprising his role as Reepicheep and the role was ultimately played by Simon Pegg in .

Izzard appeared in the BBC science fiction miniseries The Day of the Triffids based on the 1951 novel, alongside Jason Priestley, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Dougray Scott and Brian Cox.

In June 2010, Izzard is replacing actor James Spader in David Mamet's new play "RACE", on Broadway.

Izzard is scheduled to join Showtime's United States of Tara in 2011. He will play the role of a brilliant psychology professor skeptical about a disease.

Comic style

Izzard's style is heavily influenced by Monty Python, especially in his use of a stream-of-consciousness delivery that jumps between topics as he free associates on stage. He does not generally work from a script, owing to his dyslexia. Instead, he interrupts himself with new joke ideas, the characters he portrays turn into other characters, and he nonchalantly leaps from historical analysis to musings about household appliances. This often results in brief pauses in the routine which he fills with 'so, yeah', and other verbal tics that have become his trademarks. Thinking aloud is also part of Izzard's ongoing attempt to make the process of writing the show itself part of the humour. As he put it in a 2004 interview with The Guardian, "It's the oral tradition. Human beings have been doing it for thousands of years". He frequently notes the reaction to a joke midstream by pretending to write on his hand ("Should be funnier"; "Lost them there"; "They didn't believe me"; "They didn't follow, never do that again"), asks the audience questions, and verbally engages with hecklers.

Among Izzard's comic talents are mimicry and mime. He portrays God as an authority figure using the voice of James Mason and casts Sean Connery as Noah; these impersonations appear in many of his performances. Izzard also imitates activities such as sawing wood, vacuum cleaning, and mowing the lawn, anthropomorphising the machines with accents and personalities. Successful impressions, such as his Scottish clarinet teacher, Mrs. Badcrumble, become running gags which recur in different shows. He tackles topics both contemporary and historic, including frequent re-imaginings of historical events which result in scenes like 'Cake or Death: Church of England runs the Inquisition', or 'Jesus Ministers to the Dinosaurs'.

When asked about his comedy style by George Stroumboulopoulos, host of CBC Television's talk show, The Hour, Izzard described his use of history by saying,

"I just talk complete bullshit. The history, the politics, I noticed that no one was using history, so there's a lot of history lying about the place, and it's all free, and it's on Wikipedia! You know, I use Wikipedia like a crazy idiot, now. Then I take all this stuff, and I regurgitate it into a weird angle".

In 2008, in his Stripped tour, Izzard began using Wikipedia itself as part of his stand-up act, reading from a live copy of an article (via an iPhone) and mocking Wikipedia's self-referential editorial style.

Traditionally, Izzard has focused on the creative possibilities of thinking through absurd situations in real time. He also turns much of the attention on himself and his personality, including his cross-dressing ("It is my manifest destiny to wear a dress on all seven continents"). Contemporary pop culture (Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.) is also a frequent subject, brought up both to critique its weaknesses and to enhance his anecdotes.

His bent towards the surreal even went so far as to produce a sitcom called Cows in 1997 for Channel 4, a live action comedy with actors dressed in cowsuits.

Transvestism

, October 17, 2003]] In his show, Dress to Kill, Izzard describes himself as an "executive", "action" and "professional" transvestite, as "a male tomboy" rather than a drag queen or a "weirdo" transvestite (he cites J. Edgar Hoover and Hermann Göring as examples of the latter). He regularly cross-dresses both on and off stage and makes it clear that cross-dressing is, for him, neither a part of his performance nor a sexual fetish. He remarks in his show Unrepeatable, "Women wear what they want and so do I". According to Izzard, "Most transvestites fancy women". [Dress to Kill, 1999] He dismisses claims that he is a male homosexual, saying he is "a straight transvestite or a male lesbian". He has also described himself as "a lesbian trapped in a man's body", transgender, and "a complete boy plus half a girl".

He has also campaigned unsuccessfully against the closure of the departments of Drama and Languages, Linguistics and Translation at the University of East Anglia, although the department of Drama was later reprieved. In 1998, Izzard was named in a list of the biggest private financial donors to the Labour Party. He appeared in a party political broadcast for the Labour Party in the run up to the 2005 general election. He donated nearly £10,000 to the party in 2008, appeared again in a party political broadcast for the 2009 European election and again in a 2010 election video entitled 'Brilliant Britain'.

On 20 July 2006, he received an honorary doctorate in Letters from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sheffield, where he spent one year on an Accounting and Financial Management course in the early 80s. During his time at the University he established the now-defunct Alternative Productions Society in the Union of Students with the aim of promoting fringe-based arts. On 4 March 2010 he was elected as the Honorary President of the University of Sheffield Union of Students.

On 7 July 2007, Izzard was one of the presenters from the London leg of Live Earth. During an interview for the 2008 Stripped tour, Izzard spoke about becoming more active in European politics as well as running for political office in Europe within the next decade. Izzard added a stop in New Orleans during his 2008 Stripped tour. All proceeds from the performance of 23 June 2008 were donated to Neighborhood Housing Services of New Orleans.

Marathons

On 27 July 2009, with only 5 weeks training and no significant prior history of running, Izzard began seven weeks of back-to-back marathon runs (with Sundays off) across the UK to raise money for Sport Relief. He ran from London to Cardiff, to Belfast, to Edinburgh, and back to London carrying flags of England, Scotland or Wales depending on which country he was in, and carried a self-designed green flag bearing a white dove when in Northern Ireland. The blog Eddie Iz Running was a document of his road running marathon, in which he ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He completed the run on 15 September 2009, after having run at least 27 miles each day, 6 days a week for 7 weeks straight, covering more than 1,100 miles across the UK. Izzard received a special award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2009 for his achievements.

Izzard ran his final marathon in five hours and 30 seconds, narrowly outside his projected time. However, had he not stopped and waited 20 minutes for his film crew to catch up with him he could have finished well under his target time. In March 2010, Izzard took part in the Sport Relief Mile event.

Following the completion of the marathon runs, Izzard has started training to take part in an Ironman Triathlon, saying he has become fascinated with fitness "because there's no point in throwing away all that training".

Personal life

During his Stripped tour, Izzard said he realised he was an atheist. "I was warming the material up in New York, where one night, literally on stage, I realised I didn’t believe in God at all. I just didn’t think there was anyone upstairs."

He keeps his romantic life private, saying one of the reasons is due to the wishes of his companions not wanting to become content for his show. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, Izzard was voted amongst the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. He was number 75 in Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.

During the 1999 television special It's... the Monty Python Story, which Izzard hosted, John Cleese said Izzard was the "Lost Python"; Izzard furthered that idea via his substitution for Graham Chapman in public performance of Python material with the rest of the original members of the troupe. He also made a cameo appearance in the Python reunion interview Monty Python Live At Aspen.

In 2008, Izzard received the James Joyce Award of the Literary and Historical Society of UCD, Dublin, Ireland. In March 2010, the Students Union of the University of Sheffield overwhelmingly elected him their honorary President.

Discography and appearances

Stand-up

Live at the Ambassadors (15 November, 1993)

Unrepeatable (1994)

Definite Article (21 October, 1996)

Glorious (17 November, 1997)

Dress to Kill (9 November, 1998)

Circle (18 November, 2002)

Sexie (26 November, 2003)

Stripped (23 November, 2009)

Stage

900 Oneonta (1994)

The Cryptogram (1994)

Edward II (1995)

Lenny (1999)

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (2001–2002, 2003)

Trumbo (2003)

Filmography

The Oncoming Storm (1995) as Luthor Keeton

The Secret Agent (1996) as Vladimir

Velvet Goldmine (1998) as Jerry Devine

The Avengers (1998) as Bailey

Mystery Men (1999) as Tony P

The Criminal (1999) as Peter Hume

Circus (2000) as Troy

Shadow of the Vampire (2000) as Gustav von Wangenheim

The Cat's Meow (2001) as Charlie Chaplin

All the Queen's Men (2001) as Tony Parker

Revengers Tragedy (2002) as Lussurioso

Alien Invasion (2003) as Brik

Blueberry aka Renegade (2004) as Prosit

Five Children and It (2004) as It (voice)

Romance & Cigarettes (2004) as Gene Vincent

Ocean's Twelve (2004) as Roman Nagel

The Aristocrats (2005) as Himself

The Wild (2006) as Nigel (voice)

My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) as Professor Bedlam

Ocean's Thirteen (2007) as Roman Nagel

Across the Universe (2007) as Mr. Kite

(2008) as Reepicheep (voice)

Igor (2008) as Dr. Schadenfreude (voice)

Valkyrie (2008) as Erich Fellgiebel

Rage (2009) as Tiny Diamonds

Every Day (2009) as Garrett

The Other Side (2009) as Dean Bellamy

(2009) as Himself

TV appearances

Barf Bites Back (Amnesty International Gala) (1991) - ITV

Open Fire (1994)

Have I Got News for You (1994, 1995 and 1996) - BBC Two

Aristophanes: The Gods are Laughing (1995)

Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1995)

Tales from the Crypt (1996) - HBO

Clive Anderson Talks Back (1996)

Inspector Derrick (1997)

Channel Izzard (1997)

Roseanne Barr Show (1998)

Rex the Runt (1998) - BBC

Shooting Stars (1998) - BBC

Parkinson (3 times)

Dennis Miller Live (1999) - HBO

Pythonland (1999) - BBC

Python Night (1999) - BBC

Good News Week (2000) - Network 10

Mongrel Nation (2002) - Discovery Channel

The Caroline Rhea Show (2002)

The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (2002, 2004 and 2007)

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (2009)

40 (2003) - Channel 4

Late Night with Conan O'Brien (2003, 2008) NBC

QI (Unaired pilot- 2002 or 2003, and 2010)

Top Gear (2004) - BBC Two

Last Call with Carson Daly (2005)

The Sharon Osbourne Show (2006)

Late Show with David Letterman (6 times)

Late Late show with Craig Kilborn (4 times)

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2006, 2008, 2009,2010)

The Henry Rollins Show (2006)

The Paul O'Grady Show (2009)

The Secret Policeman's Ball (2006)

Kitchen (2007) - five

Comedy Cuts (interview) (2007)

The Hour (2007)

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (2007 and 2009)

The Daily Show (2000, 2003 and 2007)

The Riches (2007–2008)

The Secret Policeman's Ball (2008)

(2008)

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (2009)

Kevin Pollak's Chat Show (2009)

''BBC Sports Personality of the Year (2009 award winner)

''The Day of the Triffids (2009)

Marathon Man (2010)

The Simpsons episode To Surveil with Love (2010)

Chelsea Lately (2010)

Video game

- Sgt. Tibbs the Cat (voice)

Future projects

Eddie Izzard said in a personal appearance (for his biopic Believe) that he is currently putting together a script for a movie as a conclusion to The Riches. He said the plan is to "pick up exactly where we left off, and we think we're going to make a film of the next bit". As of May 24, 2010 there are no indications that this film will ever be made, leaving The Riches without a conclusion. He has announced for future tours that a dollar out of each ticket sale will be appropriated to supplying Africa with contraceptives and other means of sexual protection.

See also

Cross-dressing in film and television

References

External links

Official web site

BBC America - Eddie Izzard

Interview with Izzard - The Observer, 3 October 2004

It's stupid and I love it - the Goon Show and me - The Guardian, 14 February 2005.

Izzard interviewed by Bono - The Independent, 16 May 2006

Venus Zine Staff Picks: Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill

Category:1962 births Category:People from Aden Category:Drama Desk Award winners Category:English atheists Category:English buskers Category:English comedians Category:English film actors Category:English voice actors Category:English television actors Category:English stand-up comedians Category:Cross-dressers Category:Living people Category:Old Eastbournians Category:Emmy Award winners

Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Caption	Ferrell in May 2009
Birth date	July 16, 1967
Birth name	John William Ferrell
Birth place	Irvine, California, U.S.
Spouse	Viveca Paulin (2000–present)
Years active	1995–present
Occupation	Comedian, impressionist, actor, writer

John William "Will" Ferrell (; born , 1967) is an American comedian, impressionist, actor, and writer. Ferrell first established himself in the late 1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subsequently starred in the comedy films Old School, Elf, , , Stranger than Fiction, Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, and The Other Guys. He is considered a member of the "Frat Pack," a generation of leading Hollywood comic actors to emerge in the late 1990s and the 2000s including Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn, and brothers Owen and Luke Wilson.

Early life

Ferrell was born in Irvine, California, the son of Betty Kay ( Overman), a teacher who taught at Old Mill School elementary school, and Roy Lee Ferrell, Jr., a guitarist for The Righteous Brothers. His parents were both natives of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and moved to California in 1964; Ferrell also has Irish ancestry. He first attended school at Turtle Rock Elementary, and later attended Rancho San Joaquin Middle School, both in Irvine. He attended University High School in Irvine, and was a kicker for the school's varsity football team. He told the Orange County Register that the dullness of Irvine contributed to the growth of his humor:

Growing up in suburbia, in safe, master-planned Irvine, there was no drama so we had to create it in our heads. My main form of entertainment was cracking my friends up and exploring new ways of being funny. I didn't have to have the survival mode instinct like other comics, who grew up in tough neighborhoods. I had the opposite. For me, I grew up in Mayberry, and the humor broke the boredom. And there was a lot to make fun of.

He enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he studied Sports Broadcasting and graduated with a degree in Sports Information. He is also a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity. After graduating in 1990, he developed his improvisation skills as a member of the comedy group The Groundlings.

Saturday Night Live

Ferrell joined Saturday Night Live in 1995 and left in 2002 after a successful seven-year tenure. He returned to host twice (both in season finales), and once in the cold open of the final episode of Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday

During his time on SNL, Ferrell made a name for himself with his impersonations, which included:

U.S. President George W. Bush

Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray,

Singer Robert Goulet (crooning a cappella pieces of music by Sisqó, Baha Men, and Notorious B.I.G.),

Singer Neil Diamond,

Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton (who was quoted several times to favor Ferrell's impersonation),

Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy,

United States Attorney General Janet Reno,

Convicted Unabomber Ted Kaczynski,

Game show host Alex Trebek,

Fictitious black private detective Shaft,

Professional wrestler-turned-Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura,

U.S. Vice President Al Gore (Darrell Hammond took over once Ferrell started playing Bush),

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein,

Cuban President Fidel Castro.

His original characters included "Morning Latte" co-host Tom Wilkins, Ed the Horse's twin brother Ned, fictional Blue Öyster Cult member Gene Frenkle (physically modeled after Blue Öyster Cult vocalist Eric Bloom), music teacher Marty Culp, Spartan cheerleader Craig Buchanan, Dale Sturtevant from "Dissing Your Dog", Hank of the Bill Brasky Buddies, David Leary from "Dog Show", and night clubber Steve Butabi in a sketch that went to the big screen in 1998's A Night at the Roxbury.

Ferrell returned to Saturday Night Live as a guest host on , 2005, and , 2009. Both times, he reprised his role as Alex Trebek in the "Celebrity Jeopardy" sketches. On the appearance, Ferrell reprised his role as Robert Goulet in a fake commercial advertising a series of crooned ringtones and, during the performance of the song "Little Sister" by musical guests Queens of the Stone Age, Ferrell came on stage playing the cowbell.

Ferrell became the highest paid cast member of Saturday Night Live in 2001 with a season salary of $350,000.

Film

During his time on Saturday Night Live, Ferrell appeared in several movies: , A Night at the Roxbury, Superstar, The Ladies Man, Dick, Drowning Mona, , Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Zoolander.

His first starring role came after his departure from SNL with Frank "The Tank" Richard in Old School (2003). The film "belongs to Mr. Ferrell," declared the New York Times, which described how he "uses his hilarious, anxious zealotry to sell the part." Old School was a major success and Ferrell received an MTV Movie Awards nomination for Best Comedic Performance.

The title role in Elf (2003) followed, as did another MTV Movie Awards nomination. Ferrell continued to land comedy roles in 2004 and 2005 in films such as Melinda and Melinda, , Starsky & Hutch earning himself a place among Hollywood's Frat Pack. In 2005, Ferrell earned . In 2006, Ferrell starred in Stranger Than Fiction and ; both received critical and box office success. Ferrell's performance in Stranger Than Fiction introduced audiences to the dramatic potential of Ferrell's acting talents. On , 2006, 'The Magazine' named Ferrell as one of its three actors of the year in their 2006 year in review issue.

, December 2007]] Ferrell appeared as part of a pre-game video package for the Rose Bowl along with Texas alum Matthew McConaughey. Ferrell also sang a song at the ESPY Awards in 2006 about Lance Armstrong and Neil Armstrong. He and John C. Reilly also did a spot during the 2008 ESPY Awards where they made demands in order for them to appear at the ESPYs like asking Portland Trail Blazers' center Greg Oden to tuck them in at night and tell them stories of the old times or to bring back the Cold War so the Olympics can be interesting again.

Ferrell participated in a 79th Academy Awards musical-comedy performance with John C. Reilly and Jack Black, wherein they sang a song about comedies being snubbed by the voters in favor of dramas.

In May 2009 it was announced Ferrell is in talks to star in Neighborhood Watch, a comedy about an urbanite who moves to the suburbs and uncovers a conspiracy. In negotiations to direct is David Dobkin, who gave Ferrell a cameo in Wedding Crashers. In August 2009, Ferrell decided not to do the film. In the summer of 2009, Ferrell did a large amount of filming with several young actors. He helped out on a film entitled Making a Movie, which is now on DVD.

In June 2009, Land of the Lost was released. It was a commercial and critical flop after earning on opening weekend, about two-thirds of what the studio expected.

In 2010, he was the executive producer and star of The Other Guys, a buddy cop film, which also has an ensemble cast which consists of Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Michael Keaton, Steve Coogan, Ray Stevenson, Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson. Unlike Land of the Lost, the film was a commercial success, earning over $140 million, and was positively reviewed by critics.

Voice acting

Ferrell has worked as a voice actor in several animated television programs, including his portrayal of Bob Oblong, a 1950s-style father with no arms or legs, in the short-lived animated television series The Oblongs. He has had several guest appearances on Family Guy, where he played the Black Knight in "Mr. Saturday Knight", as well as Fat Greek Guy and Miles "Chatterbox" Musket in "Fifteen Minutes of Shame". Ferrell also starred as Ted (a.k.a. The Man in the Yellow Hat) in the movie Curious George and guest voiced on an episode of the FOX sitcom King of the Hill as an overly PC soccer coach. He voiced the title character in the 2010 DreamWorks Animation film Megamind.

Funny or Die

In April 2007, Ferrell launched "Funny or Die", a streaming video website where short comedy films are uploaded and voted on by users. The site features The Landlord, starring Ferrell and Funny or Die co-founder Adam McKay. Ferrell's character is harassed for the rent by his landlady, a swearing, beer-loving, two-year-old girl (played by McKay's daughter, Pearl). Child psychologists have criticized Ferrell and the McKay family for child exploitation, to which McKay responded: }} They followed with the release of a video entitled "Good Cop, Baby Cop" which also starred baby Pearl; the end of the video stated that this would be her final appearance and wished her a happy "baby retirement."

In September 2008, Ferrell released another video entitled "Will Ferrell Answers Internet Questions" where he takes some pressing questions and comments from his fans.

Other Ferrell's appearance on "Funny or Die",

Eastbound & Down

Ferrell co-produces (with Adam McKay) an HBO show starring Danny McBride called Eastbound & Down. He also has a recurring role as car dealer Ashley Schaeffer.

Personal life

In August 2000, Ferrell married Swedish actress Viveca Paulin, whom he met in 1995 at an acting class. They live in New York City and in Orange County, California and have three sons, Magnus Paulin Ferrell, born , 2004, Mattias Paulin Ferrell, born , 2006, and Axel Paulin Ferrell, born , 2010.

In 2006, I-Newswire.com, a site that accepts submissions from readers and publishes them as "press releases", reported that Ferrell had died in a paragliding accident. The hoax was published before its factual inaccuracy was noticed. The story was further propagated when it appeared on Google News.

Ferrell is a fan of USC Trojan football. At USC, Ferrell was a member of Delta Tau Delta fraternity and is now an active alumnus. Ferrell has worked with former head coach Pete Carroll to do motivational stunts for the players during the season. Ferrell represented Chelsea as honorary captain in the coin toss before the Chelsea v Inter Milan match at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, on , 2009.

Ferrell enjoys running and has participated in several major marathons such as the Boston, New York and Stockholm Marathons. He also raises money for charity, including his Scholarships for Cancer Survivors campaign through Crowdrise; a social networking community for volunteers and a micro-donations fundraising platform.

In 2007, Autograph magazine named Ferrell the worst celebrity autographer. Its editor stated, "What's so frustrating about Will Ferrell being the worst autograph signer this past year is that he used to be so nice to fans and collectors and a great signer. What makes him so bad is that he'll taunt people asking for his autograph." In response, Ferrell has stated, "I don't know how I got on the list. I sign a lot of autographs," but has admitted to taunting autograph-seekers: "I do. I really do. I'm like, 'How badly do you want this autograph?' 'Are you sure?' 'You say you're my biggest fan, really, prove it.' I'll do things like that. They have to earn it."

Ferrell had noted that, although he was well known for his SNL impersonation of President George W. Bush, he chose, for both professional and political reasons, not to meet the President on several occasions, unlike his SNL predecessor Dana Carvey's famous chummy relationship with George H. W. Bush: "I declined, partly out of comedic purposes, because when I was on the show Saturday Night Live at the time, it didn't make sense to really meet the people that you play, for fear of them influencing you. And then the other side of it is, from a political standpoint, I don't want to meet that guy."

Ferrell made a comical debut as a relief pitcher for the Round Rock Express, the Triple-A affiliate of the Houston Astros, on , 2010. He was introduced as "Billy Ray 'Rojo' Johnson", and was brought in to relief pitch for the sixth inning. He then entertained the fans by bringing a sack of beer cans to the mound, as well as being ejected and getting chased by the opposing batter. He revealed himself to the fans when his moustache fell off during the chase. The appearance was cooked up by Ferrell and the Express, who sent out a press release announcing Johnson's "signing", to promote The Will Powered Golf Classic the following day at the nearby Cimarron Hills Country Club, which benefits Cancer for College, an organization that provides scholarships to cancer survivors.

Awards and nominations

Emmy Awards

Nominated:

2001: Outstanding Individual Performance In A Variety Or Music Program (for Saturday Night Live)

ESPY Awards

Won:

2007 ESPY Awards, Best Sports Movie (for )

2008 ESPY Awards, Best Sports Movie (for Semi-Pro)

Golden Globe Awards

Nominated:

2006: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (for The Producers)

2007: Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy (for Stranger than Fiction)

James Joyce Award

2008: James Joyce Award from University College Dublin's Literary and Historical Society in recognition for "excelling in his field".

MTV Movie Awards

Won:

2007: Best Kiss for (with Sacha Baron Cohen)

Nominated:

2003: Best Comedic Performance (for Old School)

2003: Best On-Screen Team (with Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn for Old School)

2004: Best Comedic Performance (for Elf)

2005: Best Comedic Performance (for )

2005: Best On-Screen Team (with Paul Rudd, Steve Carell and David Koechner for )

2005: Best Musical Performance (with Paul Rudd, David Koechner and Steve Carell for )

2007: Best Comedic Performance (for Blades of Glory)

2007: Best Fight (for Blades of Glory)

Razzie Awards

Nominated:

2005: Worst Actor for Bewitched and Kicking & Screaming

Satellite Awards

Nominated:

2006: Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical (for Stranger Than Fiction)

Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards

Won:

2007 Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards, Funniest Mo-fo

2007 Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards, Most Viral Video

Teen Choice Awards

Won:

2007: Choice Movie Actor - Comedy for and Blades of Glory

Nominated:

2004: Choice Comedian

2004: Choice Movie Actor - Comedy for Elf

2005: Choice Comedian

2005: Choice Movie Actor - Comedy for and Kicking & Screaming

2005: Choice Movie Hissy Fit for Kicking & Screaming

2005: Choice Movie Rumble for

2005: Choice Movie Sleazebag for Kicking & Screaming

2007: Choice Comedian

2007: Choice Movie Chemistry (with Jon Heder), for Blades of Glory

2007: Choice Movie Dance (with Jon Heder), for Blades of Glory

2007: Choice Movie Hissy Fit for Blades of Glory

2008: Choice Comedian

2008: Choice Movie Actor - Comedy for Semi-Pro

2009: Choice Movie Actor - Comedy for Land of the Lost

Tony Awards

Nominated:

2009: Best Special Theatrical Event (for You're Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush)

Filmography

{| border="2" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;" |- style="background:#b0c4de; text-align:center;" !Year !! Movie !! Role !! U.S. gross !! Notes |- |rowspan="2"| 1995 || Bucket of Blood || Young Man || || Made for TV |- | Criminal Hearts || Newscaster || || |- |rowspan="2"| 1997 || || Mustafa || US$53.9 million || |- | Men Seeking Women || Al || || |- |rowspan="2"| 1998 || A Night at the Roxbury || Steve Butabi || US$30.3 million || Also Writer |- | The Thin Pink Line || Darren Clark || || |- |rowspan="4"| 1999 || Superstar || Sky Corrigan/God || US$30.6 million || |- | Dick || Bob Woodward || US$6.2 million || |- | || Mustafa || US$206 million || |- | The Suburbans || Gil || US$11,130 || |- |rowspan="2"| 2000 || The Ladies Man || Lance DeLune || US$13.6 million || |- | Drowning Mona || Cubby the Funeral Director || US$15.4 million || |- |rowspan="2"| 2001 || Zoolander || Mugatu || US$45.2 million || |- | Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back || Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenholly || US$30.1 million || |- | 2002 || Boat Trip || Brian's Boyfriend || US$8.6 million || Uncredited |- |rowspan="2"| 2003 | Old School || Frank "the Tank" Ricard || US$74.6 million || |- | Elf || Buddy || US$173.4 million || |- |rowspan="5"| 2004 || Melinda and Melinda || Hobie || US$3.8 million || |- | || Ron Burgundy || US$84.1 million || Also Writer |- | || Ron Burgundy || || Straight-To-DVDAlso Writer |- | Starsky & Hutch || Big Earl || US$88.2 million || Uncredited |- | Oh, What a Lovely Tea Party || Himself || || |- |rowspan="6"| 2005 | The Producers || Franz Liebkind ||US$19.4 million || |- | Wedding Crashers|| Chazz Reinhold || US$209.2 million || Uncredited |- | Winter Passing || Corbit || US$101,228 || |- | Bewitched || Jack Wyatt/Darrin || US$62.3 million || |- | Kicking & Screaming || Phil Weston || US$52.6 million || |- | The Wendell Baker Story || Dave Bix || US$127,144 || |- |rowspan="3"| 2006 | Stranger Than Fiction || Harold Crick ||US$40.1 million || |- | || Ricky Bobby ||US$148.2 million || Also Writer/Executive Producer |- | Curious George || Ted/The Man in the Yellow Hat || US$58.3 million || Voice Role |- || 2007 | Blades of Glory || Chazz Michael Michaels || US$118.2 million || |- |rowspan="2"| 2008 | Semi-Pro || Jackie Moon || US$33.4 million || |- | Step Brothers || Brennan Huff || US$101.1 million || Also Writer/Executive Producer |- |rowspan="3"| 2009 |Land of the Lost || Dr. Rick Marshall || US$49.4 million || |- | || Craig McDermott || US$15.1 million || UncreditedAlso Producer |- |SpongeBob's Truth or Square || Himself || || |- |rowspan="4"| 2010 |The Other Guys || Detective Allen Gamble || US$140 million || Also Executive Producer |- |Megamind || Megamind || ||Voice Role |- |Hubworld || Himself || ||Guest starSeason 1, Episode 1 |- |Everything Must Go || Nick Halsey || || |- |rowspan="2"| 2011 |Casa De Mi Padre || || || |}

Television work

Saturday Night Live (cast member from 1995 to 2002, host in 2005 and 2009)

Cow and Chicken (1997–2001, voice in various episodes)

Saturday Night Live: Presidential Bash 2000 (2000)

Family Guy (as the Black Knight, 2001)

Undeclared (guest star)

The Oblongs (Bob Oblong, 2001–2002, voice)

King of the Hill (as Coach Lucas, 1999, voice)

The Tom Green Show (guest star)

Family Guy (as himself, 2005)

The Naked Trucker and T-Bones Show (guest star)

Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway (voiceover and guest)

Eastbound & Down (BMW Dealership Owner Ashley Schaeffer)

You're Welcome America: A Final Night With George W. Bush

Man vs. Wild (guest star)

Live with Regis and Kelly (co-host)

''63rd Tony Awards (2009), 2009 MTV Movie Awards and 2009 TV Land Awards

'' The Merrick & Rosso Show (as himself, 2009)

SpongeBob SquarePants (as himself, 2009)

Strangers with Candy (2000)

Funny or Die Presents (2010)

Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job (2010)

30 Rock (2010)

Salary

(2006) $20,000,000

Bewitched (2005) $20,000,000

Kicking & Screaming (2005) $20,000,000

(2004) $6,900,000

References

External links

Will Ferrell's High Five Hollywood

Will Ferrell's profile on Funny Or Die

10 Best Will Ferrell Skits

Will Ferrell Interview for 'Everything Must Go'

Will Ferrell Interview

Maxim Rated Top SNL performer

Will Ferrell at Complex Magazine

HBO's Special Event page for Will Ferrell You're Welcome America: A Final Night with George W Bush

Crowdrise Scholarships for Cancer Survivors Fundraising Campaign

Category:1967 births Category:American comedians Category:American film actors Category:American impressionists (entertainers) Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American screenwriters Category:American television actors Category:American television producers Category:American television writers Category:American voice actors Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:Actors from California Category:The Groundlings Category:American comedians of Irish descent Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Living people

Category:People from Irvine, California Category:People from Orange County, California Category:University of Southern California alumni

Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Name	Tony Hawk| headercolor=#99bdcc
Caption	Hawk in November 2006
Fullname	Anthony Frank Hawk
Birthdate	May 12, 1968
Birthplace	San Diego, California, United States
Sport	Skateboarding
Country
Height
Weight
Medaltemplates

}} Anthony Frank Hawk (born May 12, 1968), better known as Tony Hawk, is an American professional skateboarder. Hawk gained significant fame for completing the first 900 as well as his licensed video game titles distributed by Activision. He is widely considered one of the most successful and influential pioneers of modern vertical skateboarding.

Raised in San Diego, California, Hawk was described as being "hyperactive" as a child. His parents supported his skateboarding because it served as an outlet for his excessive energy, and as Hawk's skills developed, he became a professional skateboarder at age fourteen. In 1999, he became the first skater to land a 900 in competition. In 2002, he created the Boom Boom Huck Jam, an extreme sports competition in Las Vegas. Throughout his career, Hawk has made numerous appearances in films and other media, as well as his own series of video games. He has also been involved in various philanthropic activities, including collaborations with other athletes in the charity Athletes For Hope.

Early Life

Hawk was born in San Diego, California, to a retired U.S. Navy officer, Frank Hawk, and his wife Nancy, a part-time business teacher. Hawk began skateboarding at age eight after his older brother Steve bought him a used skateboard and his father constructed a ramp in their backyard. When Hawk was young, he was described as being "hyperactive,"

Film and television appearances

Hawk was hired for stunt work in the 1983 film as a stunt double for David Spade, but was fired as he was not a close physical match. In 1989, he appeared as a skateboarder in Gleaming the Cube. In 2002, he appeared in Neal H. Moritzs's and Christopher Gilcrest's film xXx playing the role of one of Xander Cages stuntman friends, and later in the movie, a skateboarder at a party. In 2004 he played himself in the Australian skateboarding movie Deck Dogz. In 2006, Tony Hawk appeared in a cameo on the film Drake & Josh Go Hollywood as himself; when Drake & Josh steal his car to escape from two crooks with the Geo (iPods) that carry illegal information for counterfeiting money. Tony Hawk also asks for the cops to give Drake & Josh a police escort to Sunset Studios, for a performance on TRL. Hawk has had a cameo in film The New Guy. Hawk appeared in with Mat Hoffman and Bam Margera, skateboarding in a fat suit and Jackass 2, while skateboarding through an obstacle course. Tony appears in the film following the 2006 Gumball Rally, 3000 Miles, again with Bam Margera. He also plays the police officer who arrests Ryan Dunn in the movie . Hawk also made a brief cameo appearance in Lords Of Dogtown as an astronaut, where he is shown comically falling off the skateboard as he is a "rookie". He played himself in an episode of Rocket Power.

Mobile Wave machine, installed for the 2009 Canadian National Exhibition.]]

Hawk was featured as an extra in the "Weird Al" Yankovic video "Smells like Nirvana". He can be seen sitting in the bleachers during the crowd sweep near Dick Van Patten. He also made a cameo appearance in the Simple Plan music video for "I'm Just a Kid", he can be seen, in a crowd, watching kids at a high school skating.

On television, he has also appeared in What I Like About You, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, The Tom Green Show, The Naked Brothers Band and Zeke and Luther. Hawk was a guest on the kid's show on Nickelodeon, Yo Gabba Gabba. He also guest voiced on The Simpsons episode "Barting Over", where he played himself, along with fellow San Diegans Blink-182. In the episode, Hawk lends Homer a new board from his brand where complete rookies are able to perform at the top levels. He ends up having a comical play off with him after Homer begins to show him up. On the PBS Kids show Cyberchase, he guest starred as Slider's long-lost father, Coop. In the episode "Game Over" he played a game programmer who was murdered. In 2008, he played on Million Dollar Password. Hawk also played on Fox's Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader. Tony Hawk helped design the world famous Canvey Island skate park in 1982.

Video games

A video game series based on his skateboarding debuted in 1999. Since then, the series has spawned 15 titles, including main series titles, spin-offs, and repackages.

Hawk has also appeared in Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX and Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer as a hidden Rider and Surfer.

In-game likeness and appearances

Tony Hawk was originally designated as the protagonist of the Tony Hawk series. Hawk appears as a player character in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.

Hawk's role in the series was usurped by customizable player characters in later installments, but he has remained a prominent character. In the 2003 game Tony Hawk's Underground, he is a minor non-player character whom the player meets in Tampa, Florida and skates against. Impressed with the player's skills, Hawk grants them entry into a skate competition. He later appears in Moscow to teach them the "360 Varial Heelflip Lien" move. Hawk and other skaters are briefly playable near the end of the game when they skate in a promotional video for the player's skate team, and in all gameplay modes except the story mode.

Personal life

in 2007.]] Hawk married Cindy Dunbar in April 1990. They had a son, Hudson "Riley" Hawk (born December 6, 1992) whom they named for one of Hawk's ancestors. Riley also skates for Lakai Limited Footwear and Hawk's own Birdhouse Skateboards. The couple divorced in 1993. The couple's first child, a daughter named Kadence Clover Hawk, was born on June 30, 2008.

Philanthropy

In 2007, Hawk, Andre Agassi, Muhammad Ali, Lance Armstrong, Warrick Dunn, Jeff Gordon, Mia Hamm, Andrea Jaeger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Mario Lemieux, Alonzo Mourning and Cal Ripken, Jr. founded the charity Athletes for Hope which helps professional athletes get involved in charitable causes and aims to inspire all people to volunteer and support their communities.

References

External links

Tony Hawk At Soggy Bottom on www.shredordie.com

Plum TV Telluride Talks to Tony Hawk at X Dance

Tony Hawk's Guest DJ Project on KCRW KCRW Guest DJ set

Tony Hawks Twitter Account

Category:1968 births Category:American businesspeople Category:American skateboarders Category:Sportspeople from California Category:Living people Category:People from San Diego, California Category:X-Games athletes

Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Name	Bill Bailey
Caption	Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra, in 2008
Birth name	Mark Bailey
Birth place	Bath, Somerset, England
Active	1989 – present
Genre	Surreal humour, musical comedy, storytelling
Spouse	Kristin Bailey (1998-present)
Religion	Pagan
Website
Notable work	Black BooksNever Mind the BuzzcocksQI
Notable role	Manny Biancoin Black BooksBilboin Spaced

Bill Bailey (born Mark Bailey 13 January Bill Bailey is a patron of International Animal Rescue.

Personal life

Bailey spent the majority of his childhood in Keynsham, a town situated between Bath and Bristol in the West of England. His father was a general practitioner and his mother was a hospital ward sister. His maternal grandparents lived in an annexe, built on the side of the house by his maternal grandfather who was a stonemason and builder. Two rooms at the front of the family house were for his father's surgery. where he was initially an academic pupil winning most of the prizes. However, at about the age of 15 years, he started to become distracted from school work when he realised the thrill of performance as a member of a school band called Behind Closed Doors, which played mostly original work. He was the only pupil at his school to study A-level music and he passed with an A grade. He also claims to have been good at sport (captain of KES 2nd XI cricket team 1982), which often surprised his teachers. He would often combine the two by leading the singing on the long coach trip back from away rugby fixtures. It was here that he was given his nickname Bill by his music teacher, Ian Phipps, for being able to play the song "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" so well on the guitar.

He spent his early years listening to Monty Python records, and rehearsing with a band called the "Famous Five", who he himself confesses were very bad but still much better than him and who, unexpectedly, had six members. However, he is a classically trained musician and received an Associateship Diploma from the London College of Music as well as being made an honorary member of the Society of Crematorium Organists. Despite this, he has said that he always had the temptation to be silly with music, a trait that influences his stand-up shows.

Bailey often mythologises his early years in his stand-up. In his show Bewilderness, he claims to have attended Bovington Gurney School of Performing Arts and Owl Sanctuary. He talks about a succession of jobs he had before becoming a comedian, including lounge pianist, crematorium organist, door-to-door door-salesman and accompanist for a mind-reading dog. A clip of Bailey's appearance in the dog's routine was shown during his Room 101 appearance. He also is self-deprecating about his appearance, suggesting he is so hairy that he is part troll, or that his hair or beard is a small animal named Lionel whom he has trained to sit 'very very still.'

Bailey also talks about his role as a "Disenfranchised Owl" in an experimental Welsh theatre troupe (mentioned in an interview with Australian newspaper Post). Other acting roles included a part in a Workers' Revolutionary Party stage production called The Printers, which also featured Vanessa Redgrave and Frances de la Tour. His trivia page on IMDb also claims that he was awarded Best Actor in the 1986 Institut Français awards.

An avid Star Trek fan, he named his son (born 2003) after the character Dax and often refers to himself as a Klingon (once claiming during his "Part Troll" tour that his ear-mounted microphone made him resemble "a wizard in a call centre" and "a Klingon motivational speaker").

Bailey married his wife Kirstin in 1998. They have one son, Dax.

In 2010, Bailey endorsed the Labour Party in the upcoming General Election, appearing in the party's fifth party election broadcast of the 2010 campaign. He is also a feminist and supporter of the Fawcett Society.

Career

Early stand-up

Bailey began touring the country with other comedians such as Mark Lamarr. In 1984 he formed a double act, the Rubber Bishops, with Toby Longworth (a former fellow pupil at King Edward's Bath). They achieved a certain amount of success on the club circuit, partly due to their rigorous schedule — sometimes as many as three or four gigs a night. It was here that Bailey began developing his own unique style, mixing in musical parodies with deconstructions of or variations on traditional jokes ("How many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb? One, no two! No four! No eight..."). According to comedy folklore, after a reviewer once criticised his act for its lack of jokes, Bailey returned the following night, at Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, to perform a set composed entirely of punchlines. Toby left to join the RSC in 1989 and was replaced by Martin Stubbs.

Stubbs later quit to pursue a more serious career, and in 1994 Bailey performed Rock at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Sean Lock, a show about an aging rockstar and his roadie, script-edited by comedy writer Jim Miller. It was later serialised for the Mark Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 1. However, the show's attendances were not impressive and on one occasion the only person in the audience was comedian Dominic Holland. Bailey confessed in an interview with The Independent that he almost gave it up to do a telesales job.

He persevered, however, and went solo the next year with the one man show Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. The show was very well received and led to a recording at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London which was broadcast in 1997 on Channel 4 as a one-hour special called Bill Bailey Live. It was not until 2005 that this was released in DVD uncut and under its original title. It marked the first time that Bailey had been able to tie together his music and post-modern gags with the whimsical rambling style he is now known for.

After supporting Donna McPhail in 1995 and winning a Time Out award, he returned to Edinburgh in 1996 with a critically acclaimed show that was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. Amongst the other nominees was future Black Books co-star Dylan Moran, who narrowly beat him in the closest vote in the award's history.

Bailey won the Best Live Stand-Up award at the British Comedy Awards, 1999.

Television

Though he didn't win the Perrier in 1996, the nomination was enough to get him noticed, and in 1998 the BBC gave him his own television show, Is It Bill Bailey?

This was not Bailey's first foray into television. His debut was on the children's TV show Motormouth in the late 1980s, playing piano for a mind-reading dog.The trick went hilariously wrong, and Bailey reminisced about the experience on the BBC show Room 101 with Paul Merton in 2000. In 1991, he was appearing in stand-up shows such as The Happening, Packing Them In, The Stand Up Show, and The Comedy Store. He also appeared as captain on two panel games, an ITV music quiz pilot called Pop Dogs, and the poorly received Channel 4 sci-fi quiz show, Space Cadets. However Is it Bill Bailey? was the first time he had written and presented his own show.

With his star on the rise and gaining public recognition, over the next few years, Bailey made well received guest appearances on shows such as Have I Got News For You, World Cup Comedy, Room 101, Des O'Connor Tonight, Coast to Coast and three episodes of off-beat Channel 4 sitcom Spaced, in which he played comic-shop manager Bilbo Bagshot.

In 1998, Dylan Moran approached him with the pilot script for Black Books, a Channel 4 sitcom about a grumpy bookshop owner, his put-upon assistant, and their neurotic female friend. It was commissioned in 2000, and Bailey took the part of the assistant Manny Bianco, with Moran playing the owner Bernard, and Tamsin Greig the friend, Fran. Three series of six episodes were made, building up a large cult fanbase, providing the public awareness on which Bailey would build a successful national tour in 2001.

When Sean Hughes left his long-term role as a team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in 2002, Bailey became his successor. His style quickly blended into the show, possibly helped by his background in music. He soon developed a rapport of sorts with host Mark Lamarr, who continually teased him about his looks and his pre-occupation with woodland animals. It was announced on the 18th of September 2008 that Bill would be leaving the series and be replaced by a series of guest captains including Jack Dee and Dermot O'Leary. Whilst touring in 2009, Bailey joked that his main reason for leaving the show was a lack of desire to continue humming Britney Spears' Toxic to little known figures in the indie music scene.

Bailey has appeared frequently on the intellectual panel game QI since it began in 2003, appearing alongside host Stephen Fry and regular panellist Alan Davies. Other television appearances include a cameo role in Alan Davies' drama series Jonathan Creek as failing street magician Kenny Starkiss and obsessed guitar teacher in the "Holiday" episode of Sean Lock's Fifteen Storeys High. He later appeared with Lock again as a guest on his show TV Heaven, Telly Hell. He has also appeared twice on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

Bailey also presented Wild Thing I Love You which began on Channel 4 on 15 October 2006. The series focuses on the protection of Britain's wild animals, and has included rehoming badgers, owls, and water voles.

Bailey has most recently appeared in the second series of the E4 teenage "dramedy" Skins playing Maxxie's Dad, Walter Oliver. In episode 1, Walter struggles with his son's desire to be a dancer, instead wishing him to become a builder, which is what he himself does for a living. Walter is married to Jackie, played by Fiona Allen.

Bailey appeared on the first episode of Grand Designs Live on 4 May 2008, helping Kevin McCloud build his eco-friendly home. In 2009 Bailey appeared in the BBC show "Hustle" as the Character "Cyclops", a side-line character. In the Autumn of 2009, Bailey presented Bill Bailey's Birdwatching Bonanza.

International tours

In 2001, Bailey began touring the globe with Bewilderness, which became a huge success. A recording of a performance in Swansea was released on DVD the same year, and the show was broadcast on Channel 4 that Christmas. A modified version of it also proved successful in America, and in 2002 Bill released a CD of a recording at the WestBeth Theatre in New York. The show contained all his trademarks, popular music parodies (such as Unisex Chip Shop, a Billy Bragg tribute which he actually performed with Billy Bragg at the 2005 Glastonbury Festival), "three men in a pub" jokes (including one in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer) and deconstructions of television themes such as Countdown and The Magic Roundabout. A 'Bewilderness' CD was sold outside gigs, which was actually just a mixture of studio recordings of songs and monologues Bill had performed in the past – it was later released in shops as Bill Bailey: The Ultimate Collection... Ever!. That same year he also presented a Channel 4 countdown, Top Ten Prog Rock.

Bailey premiered his show Part Troll at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. A critical and commercial success, he then transferred it to the West End where tickets sold out in under 24 hours, and new dates had to be added. Since then he has toured it all over the UK as well as in America, Australia and New Zealand. The show marked the first time Bailey had really tackled political material, as he expanded on subjects such as the war on Iraq, which he had only touched upon before in his Bewilderness New York show. He also talks extensively on drugs, at one point asking the audience to name different ways of baking cannabis. A DVD was released in 2004.

2005 finally saw the release of his 1995 show Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. The 2-disc set also contained a director's cut of Bewilderness, which featured a routine on Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time not seen in the original version.

Bailey performed at show at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe entitled "Steampunk". It looked set to become the fastest selling fringe show ever (beating the record Bailey set with The Odd Couple in 2005). But a ticketing mix-up forced the last 10% of tickets to be purchased in person from the venue rather than pre-booked, meaning the venue filled at a slower overall rate than it should have.

Bailey appeared at the Beautiful Days festival in August 2007. The UK leg of the Tinselworm tour enjoyed 3 sell-out nights at the MEN Arena in Manchester, Europe's largest indoor arena, and culminated with a sell-out performance at Wembley Arena.

Early in 2007, a petition was started to express fans' wishes to see him cast as a dwarf in the 2010 film The Hobbit, after his stand-up routine mentioned auditioning for Gimli in The Lord of the Rings. The petition reached its goal in the early days of January, and was sent to the producers. It was hoped that as the Tinselworm tour took him to Wellington in New Zealand where the film is in pre-production, that he would be able to audition.

Bill Bailey's most recent tour, titled 'Dandelion Mind', was released on DVD on 22 November 2010.

Other appearances

2000

A small role in British comedy film Saving Grace

2001

19 July: Panelist in Radio 4's show The 99p Challenge

2002

Voice for a BMW Mini advertising campaign

Writer and performer for a series of British Airways adverts in which, through the use of music, he took a humorous look at several locations around the world

Guest panelist on BBC Radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue

2003

Juror #4 in Twelve Angry Men, directed by Guy Masterson for the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Panelist on Radio 4's show Just a Minute (twice)

4 February: Panelist (for a second time) on Radio 4's show The 99p Challenge

21 October: Presented Good Vibrations: The History of the Theremin on Radio 4

2005

Voice of the sperm whale in the 2005 film The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Co-starred as Oscar in The Odd Couple (alongside Alan Davies), directed by Guy Masterson for the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe

One of the acts in the Birmingham show "Jasper Carrott's Rock with Laughter", alongside other performers including Bonnie Tyler, Lenny Henry, Bobby Davro and the Lord of the Dance troupe

Returned to Radio 4's Just a Minute for a third show as a panelist

2006

15 March: Interviewed by Lenny Henry for Radio 4 show Chain Reaction

22 March: Returned to Chain Reaction to interview Simon Pegg

2007

A minor part in Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's film Hot Fuzz, as a pair of desk sergeant twins. (Bailey had originally meant to also appear in Pegg and Wright's earlier film, Shaun of the Dead. but the commentary included with the DVD of that movie explains that he was busy with other commitments at the time.)

February: Organised, produced, and starred in West End show Pinter's People, a collection of sketches by playwright Harold Pinter. The show also starred Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips and Geraldine McNulty

March: Appeared at the International Human Beatbox Convention at the South Bank Centre in London, introducing Shlomo to the stage for the climax of the concert, as well as showing off his own beatboxing

4 May: Guest presenter for an episode of BBC One's Have I Got News for You (a role he returned to on May 9, 2008)

July: Narrator for 'Nessy Tales', a series of animated reading books for dyslexic children

2008

]]

Guest on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs

February: Co-host of the first series of Radio 4's panel show The Museum of Curiosity

9 May: Guest presenter for an episode of BBC One's Have I Got News for You

9 June: Guest on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Later that day, appeared as Rushton in the first episode of an adaptation of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists on the same station 7 September: Guest on live Australian TV show 'Rove'. In a questionnaire to win $20 in 20 seconds, host Rove McManus asked his usual question, "Who would you turn gay for?". Bailey replied, "The pope" September: One of the hosts of the So You Think You're Funny comedy gala at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

11 October: Guest on Radio 4's Loose Ends

12 November: Performed for "We Are Most Amused", a special comedy performance to celebrate the 60th birthday of Prince Charles

2010

30 March: took part in Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London.

27 June: appeared on Top Gear's Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, while impersonating Angelina Jolie. He finished with a time of 1:50.8 in the Kia Cee'd.

Music

Bailey is a talented pianist and guitarist, and has perfect pitch; of this he has said }} His stand-up routines often feature music from genres such as jazz, rock (most notably prog rock from the early seventies), drum'n'bass, rave and classical, usually for comic value. Favourite instruments include the keyboard, guitar, theremin, kazoo and bongos. He also mentioned in an interview that he has achieved Grade 6 Clarinet. He was also part of punk band Beergut 100, which he founded in 1995 with comedy writer Jim Miller and also featured Martin Trenaman and Phil Whelans, with Kevin Eldon as lead singer. The band performed at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Trenaman and Welans had previously appeared in Cosmic Jam under the name "The Stan Ellis Experiment", and Trenaman and Eldon later featured with John Moloney in the Kraftwerk homage "Das Hokey Kokey" on the Part Troll tour. Bill claims that he and the three other performers are a Kraftwerk tribute band called Augenblick. To mark the final gig of the Part Troll tour on 1 January 2005 the band reappeared on stage after the "Das Hokey Kokey" joke to play an hour-long encore of music.

In February 2007, Bill appeared on two occasions with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Anne Dudley in a show entitled Cosmic Shindig. Performed in The Colosseum in Watford on 24 February and in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 26 February, the show contained orchestrally accompanied versions of many of Bill's previously performed songs, an exploration of the instruments of the orchestra and a number of new pieces of music. The Queen Elizabeth Hall performance was aired on BBC Radio 3 on 16 March 2007 as a part of Comic Relief 2007.

Bill had planned to put himself forward as Britain's Eurovision entry in 2008, as a result of several fan petitions encouraging him to do so.

In October 2008 he performed Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Anne Dudley.

In 2009, Bailey presented a project about the explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, in the form of an Indonesian travelogue. Bailey said in an interview that Wallace had been "airbrushed out of history", and that he feels a "real affinity" with him.

In November 2009 he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.

Tours

Cosmic Jam (1995)

Bewilderness (2001)

Part Troll (2004)

Steampunk (2006)

Tinselworm (2008)

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2009)

Dandelion Mind (2010)

DVD releases

Filmography

The James Whale Radio Show (TV series) (circa 1990) (Guest)

Blue Heaven (Channel 4 TV series) (1994)

Asylum (1996)

Space Cadets (1997) (Regular team captain)

Is It Bill Bailey? (1998)

Spaced (1999–2001)

Have I Got News for You (Guest – 1999, 2001, 2005; Guest presenter – 2007, 2008, 2009)

Saving Grace (2000)

''Maid Marian and her Merry Men (1992). Cameo court jester to King John

Black Books (2000–2004)

Jonathan Creek

* "Satan's Chimney" (2001)

* "The Tailor's Dummy" (2003)

Wild West (2002–2004)

Never Mind the Buzzcocks (2002–2008) (Regular team captain)

QI (2003–present) (Frequent guest)

"15 Storeys High" – "The Holiday" (2004)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) (Voice of the Sperm Whale)

The Libertine (Small cameo role as advisor to Charles II of England).

Wild Thing I Love You (2006) (Presenter)

''Top Gear (A Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car)

Hot Fuzz (2007)

Run Fatboy Run (2007) (Cameo)

Skins (2008)

Love Soup (2008)

We Are Most Amused (2008) (One-off special)

Hustle

* "Return of the Prodigal" (2009)

* "Diamond Seeker" (2009)

Steve's World (2009)

Burke and Hare (2010)

Bill Bailey's Bird Watching Bonanza (2010)

Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010)

Talkin' 'bout Your Generation (2010); one episode

References

External links

.

Bill Bailey on Chortle.

Category:1965 births Category:20th-century actors Category:21st-century actors Category:20th-century writers Category:21st-century writers Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Music Category:Alumni of Westfield College Category:English buskers Category:English comedians Category:English comedy musicians Category:English composers Category:English film actors Category:English guitarists Category:English stand-up comedians Category:English television actors Category:English television writers Category:Living people Category:Never Mind the Buzzcocks Category:People from Bath, Somerset Category:People from Keynsham

Coordinates	°′″N°′″N
Name	Ben Stiller
Caption	Stiller photographed by Jerry Avenaim in 2006
Alt	In the black and white image, Stiller is facing the camera. He has his right arm crossed in front of him and left hand raised to his chin, with the pointer finger right below his lips. He is wearing a black suit.
Birth name	Benjamin Edward Stiller
Birth date	November 30, 1965
Birth place	New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, comedian, director, producer, screenwriter
Years active	1975–present
Spouse	Christine Taylor (2000–present; 2 children)

Benjamin Edward "Ben" Stiller (born November 30, 1965) is an American comedian, actor, writer, film director, and producer. He is the son of veteran comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.

After beginning his acting career with a play, Stiller wrote several mockumentaries, and was offered two of his own shows, both entitled The Ben Stiller Show. He began acting in films, and had his directorial debut with Reality Bites. Throughout his career he has since written, starred in, directed, and/or produced over 50 films including Heavyweights, There's Something About Mary, Meet the Parents, Zoolander, , and Tropic Thunder. In addition, he has had multiple cameos in music videos, television shows, and films.

Stiller is a member of the comedic acting brotherhood colloquially known as the Frat Pack. His films have grossed more than $2.1 billion domestically (United States and Canada), with an average of $73 million per film. Throughout his career, he has received several awards and honors including an Emmy Award, several MTV Movie Awards, and a Teen Choice Award.

Early life

Stiller was born in New York City. His father, Jerry Stiller, is Jewish; his mother, Anne Meara, who is of Irish Catholic background, converted to Judaism after marrying his father (though the family celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas). Stiller's parents frequently took him on the sets of their appearances, including an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show when he was six. He admitted in an interview that he considered his childhood unusual: "In some ways, it was a show-business upbringing—a lot of traveling, a lot of late nights—not what you'd call traditional." His sister, actress Amy Stiller, has made appearances in many of his productions, including Reality Bites, , and Zoolander.

He displayed an early interest in film making and made Super 8 movies with his sister and friends. At 10 years old, he made his acting debut as a guest on his mother's television series Kate McShane. In the late 1970s he performed with the New York City troupe NYC's First All Children's Theater, performing in several roles, including the title role in Clever Jack and the Magic Beanstalk.

Stiller attended the Cathedral School in and graduated from the Calhoun School in New York in 1983. He started performing on the cabaret circuit as opening act to the cabaret siren Jadin Wong. Stiller then enrolled as a film student at the University of California, Los Angeles. After nine months, Stiller left school to move back to New York City. He made his way through acting classes, auditioning, and trying to find an agent.

Acting career

Beginning career

Stiller landed a role in the Broadway revival of John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves, alongside John Mahoney; the production would garner four Tony Awards.

In 1989, Stiller wrote and appeared on a season of Saturday Night Live as a featured performer. However, since the show did not want him to make more short films for the show, he left after five shows. The film starred friends and co-stars John Cusack, Jeremy Piven, Mike Myers, Andy Dick, and Jeff Kahn.

The Ben Stiller Show

MTV was so impressed with Back to Brooklyn that they offered Stiller a 13-episode show in the experimental "vid-com" format. Entitled The Ben Stiller Show, this series mixed comedy sketches with music videos and parodied various television shows, music stars, and films. It starred Stiller, along with main writer Jeff Khan and Harry O'Reilly with occasional appearances by his parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and sister Amy Stiller. Among the principal writers on The Ben Stiller Show were Stiller and Judd Apatow, with the show featuring the ensemble cast of Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, and Bob Odenkirk. Both Denise Richards and Jeanne Tripplehorn appeared as extras in various episodes. Throughout its short run, The Ben Stiller Show frequently appeared at the bottom of the ratings, even as it garnered critical acclaim and eventually won the Emmy for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program" after it was canceled.

Directorial debut

After a few minor film roles in the early 1990s, such as Stella, Highway to Hell, and a cameo in The Nutt House, Stiller devoted his time to writing, fund raising, recruiting cast members, starring in, and directing Reality Bites. Reality Bites debuted as the highest-grossing film in its opening weekend and received mixed reviews.

He joined his parents in the family film Heavyweights, in which he played two roles, and then had a brief uncredited role in Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore. Next, he had lead roles in If Lucy Fell and Flirting with Disaster, before tackling his next directorial effort with The Cable Guy which starred Jim Carrey. Stiller once again was featured in his own film as twins. The film received mixed reviews, but was noted for paying the highest salary for an actor up to that point. Jim Carrey received $20 million for his work in the film. The film also connected Stiller with future Frat Pack members Jack Black and Owen Wilson.

Also in 1996, MTV invited Stiller to host the VH1 Fashion Awards. Along with SNL writer Drake Sather, Stiller developed a short film for the awards about a male model known as Derek Zoolander. It was so well received that Stiller developed another short film about the character for the 1997 VH1 Fashion Awards and finally remade the skit into a film.

In 1999, he starred in three films, including Mystery Men, where he played a superhero wannabe called Mr. Furious. He returned to directing with a new spoof television series for Fox entitled Heat Vision and Jack, starring Jack Black, however, the show was not picked up by Fox after its pilot episode and the series was cancelled.

2000 would be a better year for Stiller as he starred in three more films including one of his most recognizable roles, as a male nurse named Greg Focker in Meet the Parents opposite Robert De Niro. The film was well-received by critics, grossed over $330 million worldwide, and spawned two sequels. Also in 2000, MTV again invited Stiller to make another short film and he developed Mission: Improbable, a spoof of Tom Cruise's role in and other films.

at Camp Pendleton on August 3, 2008.]] In 2001, Stiller would direct his third feature film, Zoolander, which focused on the character Derek Zoolander (played by Stiller) that he developed for the VH1 Fashion Awards. The film featured multiple cameos from a variety of celebrities including Donald Trump, Paris Hilton, Lenny Kravitz, Heidi Klum, and David Bowie among others. The film was banned in Malaysia (as the plot centered on an assassination attempt of a Malaysian prime minister) while shots of the World Trade Center were digitally removed and hidden for the film's release after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

After Stiller worked with Owen Wilson in Zoolander, they joined together again for The Royal Tenenbaums. Over the next two years, Stiller continued with the lackluster box office film Duplex and several cameos in Orange County and Nobody Knows Anything!. He also guest-starred on several television shows, including an appearance in an episode of the television series King Of Queens in a flashback as the father of the character Arthur (played by Jerry Stiller). He also made a guest appearance on World Wrestling Entertainment's WWE Raw.

In 2004, Stiller appeared in six different films, all of which were comedies, and include some of his highest grossing films. They include Starsky & Hutch, Envy, , an uncredited cameo in , Along Came Polly, and Meet the Fockers. While Envy only grossed $14.5 million worldwide, his most successful film of the year was Meet the Fockers, which grossed over $516.6 million worldwide. In 2005, Stiller would begin his first attempt at a computer-animated film with Madagascar, which performed so well at the box office that it resulted in a released in 2008.

In 2006, Stiller had cameo roles in School for Scoundrels, and Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, for which he served as executive producer. In December, Stiller starred in the lead role of Night at the Museum. Although not a critical favorite, it earned over $115 million in ten days. In 2007, Stiller starred alongside Malin Åkerman in the romantic comedy The Heartbreak Kid. The film earned over $100 million worldwide despite receiving mostly negative reviews. Tropic Thunder, a film he directed, co-wrote, and co-produced, and in which he starred with Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black, was released on August 13, 2008. In May 2009, he starred with Amy Adams in the sequel . In 2010, Stiller made a brief cameo in Joaquin Phoenix's mockumentary I'm Still Here and played the lead role in the comedy-drama Greenberg. Stiller again portrayed Gaylord 'Greg' Focker in Little Fockers, the second sequel to Meet the Parents. Stiller had planned to voice a character in Megamind, but later dropped out while still remaining a producer.

Upcoming projects

For 2011, Stiller will join Eddie Murphy and Alan Alda in Tower Heist about a group of maintenance workers planning a heist in a residential skyscraper. Filming began in November 2010.

Stiller, along with Tom Cruise, is attached to a comedy adaptation of The Hardy Boys entitled The Hardy Men. It has also been revealed he will star alongside Will Arnett and Katherine Heigl in Buggs P.I., which is set to be released in 2011.

The Frat Pack

Stiller is the "acknowledged leader" of the Frat Pack, a core group of actors that has worked together in multiple films. The group includes Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Steve Carell, and Paul Rudd. Stiller has been acknowledged as the leader of the group due to his multiple cameos and for his consistent use of the other members in roles in films which he produces and directs. Of the 35 primary films that are considered Frat Pack films, Stiller has been involved with 20, in some capacity. In May 2000, Stiller married Christine Taylor, whom he met while filming a never-broadcast television pilot for the Fox Broadcasting network called Heat Vision and Jack, which starred Jack Black. The couple appeared onscreen together in Zoolander, , and Tropic Thunder. He and Taylor reside in Hollywood Hills

Stiller is a supporter of the Democratic Party and donated money to John Kerry's 2004 U.S. Presidential campaign. In February 2007, Stiller attended a fundraiser for Barack Obama and later donated to the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaigns of Democrats Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton. Stiller is also a supporter of several charities including Declare Yourself, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and the Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation. In 2010, Stiller joined Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Robin Williams, and other Hollywood stars in "The Cove PSA: My Friend is... ", an effort to stop the slaughter of dolphins and protect the Japanese population from the toxic levels of mercury found in dolphin meat.

In a 1999 interview with GQ and later in a 2001 interview with Hollywood.com, Stiller was quoted as saying that he has bipolar disorder, an illness he said that ran in his family. In one interview he clarified, "I said jokingly in GQ that I was, like, crazy, and it came out as: Ben Stiller, bipolar manic-depressive!"

Stiller frequently does impersonations of many of his favorite performers, including Bono, Tom Cruise, Bruce Springsteen, and David Blaine. In an interview with Parade, he commented that Robert Klein, George Carlin, and Jimmie Walker were inspirations for his comedy career. He frequently references the show in his work, and named his production company Red Hour Productions after the original Star Trek episode "The Return of the Archons".

Filmography

Actor

Director and producer

Television work

Music videos

Awards and honors

Stiller was awarded an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program"for his work on The Ben Stiller Show. Princeton University's Class of 2005 inducted Stiller as an honorary member of the class during its "Senior Week" in April 2005. On February 23, 2007, Stiller received the Hasty Pudding Man of the Year award from Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals. According to the organization, the award is given to performers who give a lasting and impressive contribution to the world of entertainment. On March 31, 2007, Stiller received the "Wannabe Award" from the Kids' Choice Awards. On May 31, 2009, Stiller received the MTV Generation Award, at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards. It is the ceremony's top honor.

References

Further reading

Bankston, John. Ben Stiller (Real-Life Reader Biography). Mitchell Lane Publishers, 2002. ISBN 1584151323.

Dougherty, Terri. Ben Stiller (People in the News). Lucent Books, 2006. ISBN 1590187237.

External links

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from New York Category:American Jews Category:American comedians Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American screenwriters Category:American television actors Category:American television directors Category:American television writers Category:American voice actors Category:California Democrats Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish comedians

Category:People from Manhattan