Stephen James Merchant (born 24 November 1974) is an English writer, director, radio presenter, comedian, and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais, as the co-writer and co-director of the popular British sitcom The Office, as the co-writer, co-director and a co-star of Extras, and as the co-host of The Ricky Gervais Show in its radio, podcast, audiobook and television-show forms. The Ricky Gervais Show in radio form has won a bronze Sony Award.
Merchant appeared in the BBC TV series Life's Too Short in which he co-wrote and co-directs. He also voiced the character Wheatley in the popular 2011 video game Portal 2, co-developed Sky TV travel series An Idiot Abroad, and performs as a stand-up comedian. He has won three BAFTA Awards, four British Comedy Awards, and an Emmy.
Merchant was born in Bristol, England, the son of Jane Elaine (née Hibbs), a nursery nurse, and Ronald John Merchant, an insurance representative. He attended Hanham High School. As he has described in Xfm London shows and podcasts, Merchant was a very shy child, tending to focus more on school work as opposed to sport. His school yearbook predicted that he would enjoy success.
Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (born February 17, 1981) is an American actor whose career as both a child and adult has included television series and films. He is known for his roles in the 2009 indie film (500) Days of Summer (for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination), a supporting role in the 2010 science fiction film Inception, and for starring in the 2011 drama 50/50 (for which he earned his second Golden Globe nomination).
Beginning in commercials as a young child, he made his film debut in 1992's Beethoven. Gordon-Levitt subsequently co-starred in the television sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996–2001) as the young Tommy Solomon. After a hiatus during which he attended Columbia University, Gordon-Levitt left television for film acting, appearing in films like 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and Manic (2001), followed by critically acclaimed performances in 2004's Mysterious Skin, 2005's Brick, and 2007's The Lookout. He runs an online collaborative production company titled HitRECord.
James Thomas "Jimmy" Fallon, Jr. (born September 19, 1974) is an American actor, comedian, singer, musician and television host. He currently hosts Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, a late-night talk show that airs Monday through Friday on NBC. Prior to that he appeared in several films, and was best known as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1998–2004.
James Thomas Fallon, Jr., was born in Brooklyn, New York. Jimmy is the son of Gloria and James Fallon, Sr., who is a Vietnam War veteran. His family later settled in Saugerties, New York, while his father worked at IBM in nearby Kingston, New York. He is of Irish descent. As a child, he and his older sister, Gloria, would reenact the “clean parts” of Saturday Night Live that his parents had taped for him. Fallon was such a fan of Saturday Night Live that he made a weekly event of watching it in his dormitory during college. In his teens, he impressed his parents with different impersonations, the first being of James Cagney. He was also musically inclined, and started playing guitar at age 13. He would go on to mix comedy and music in contests and shows.
Graham William Walker, known by his stage name Graham Norton, (born 4 April 1963) is an Irish actor, comedian, television presenter and columnist. He is the host of comedy chat programme The Graham Norton Show on BBC One in the UK and BBC America in the US. Hot Press has described him as "the 21st century's answer to Terry Wogan", with both men sharing an Irish background and the common link of being a BBC Radio 2 presenter and the BBC television commentator of the Eurovision Song Contest. Norton has won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Entertainment Performance on five occassions.
Norton was born in Clondalkin, a suburb of Dublin, but grew up in Bandon, County Cork, Ireland to a Protestant family. He was educated at Bandon Grammar School, in County Cork and then University College Cork but did not complete his studies.
In 1992 his stand-up comedy drag act in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as a tea-towel clad Mother Teresa of Calcutta made the press when Scottish Television's religious affairs department mistakenly thought he represented the real Mother Teresa.
Ricky Dene Gervais (/dʒərˈveɪz/; born 25 June 1961) is an English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter.
Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with frequent collaborator Stephen Merchant. In addition to writing and directing the shows, Gervais played the lead roles of David Brent in The Office and Andy Millman in Extras. Gervais has also starred in a number of Hollywood films, assuming leading roles in Ghost Town and The Invention of Lying. He has performed on four sell-out stand-up comedy tours, written the best-selling Flanimals book series and starred with Merchant and Karl Pilkington in the most downloaded podcast in the world as of March 2009,The Ricky Gervais Show.
He has won multiple awards and honours, including seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards and the 2006 Rose d'Or, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. In 2007 he was voted the 11th greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups and again in the updated 2010 list as the 3rd greatest stand-up comic. In 2010 he was named on the TIME 100 list of the world's most influential people.