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Roberta Smith is an art critic for the New York Times and a lecturer on contemporary art.

Born in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Smith studied at Grinnell College in Iowa. Her career in the arts started in 1968 while an undergraduate summer intern at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The following year she was awarded a fellowship to participate in the Independent Study Program (ISP) at the Whitney Museum where she met Donald Judd and became interested in Minimal art. After graduation, she returned to New York City in 1971 to take a secretarial job at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by part-time assistant jobs to Judd and Paula Cooper in 1972. While at the Paula Cooper Gallery she wrote exhibition reviews for Artforum, and subsequently for Art in America, the Village Voice and other publications as well. She began writing for the New York Times in 1986.

Smith has written numerous essays for catalogues and monographs on contemporary artists, and wrote the featured essay in the Judd catalogue raisonné published by the National Gallery of Canada in 1975. In 2003, the College Art Association awarded Smith the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism.^[1] She was ranked 80 in ArtReview's guide to the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art: Power 100, 2010.^[2]

Smith is well-known for her clear, insightful and accessible writing style. She not only writes about contemporary art but also about the visual arts in general, including decorative arts, popular and outsider art, design, and architecture.

Smith lives in New York City with her husband Jerry Saltz, senior art critic for New York Magazine.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Articles in the New York Times, accessed May 18, 2009
• Interview in the Brooklyn Rail, accessed May 18, 2009

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Patrick Brill, better known by his pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith (born 1963) is a British contemporary artist.^[1]

Life and work[link]

Brill graduated from University of Reading, Brill was awarded a scholarship at The British School at Rome while still an undergraduate. Brill followed this with a MA at Goldsmiths College, London.

Brill devised a number of artist personas and types of work and then sent examples of these to commercial galleries, where the first to gain a positive response was Bob and Roberta Smith.^{[vague][says who?]}

Patrick Brill paints slogans in a unique brightly coloured lettering style on banners and discarded boards of wood and exhibits them in galleries of contemporary art across the world. The slogans are usually humorous musing on art, politics, popular culture, Britain and the world in general and they often support his activist campaigns, such as his 2002 amnesty on bad art at Perogi Gallery, New York. A recent example of his gift for merging art & politics was illustrated in the exhibition Peace Camp. Bob & Roberta Smith took part in and curated the show held at The Brick Lane Gallery - the show & programme of events explored artists perceptions on Peace. The exhibition featured over 100 artists including Gavin Turk, Rebecca Taber, Wolfgang Tillmans, Abby Jackson and Seb Patene.

Noted for sign painting, Bob and Roberta Smith also make sculpture using cement, as in his 2005 Cement Soup Kitchen at Beaconsfield Gallery, London.[1]

"[Patrick Brill] grew attracted to postures of amateurism and failure. His more recent work has suggested an interest in the utopian impulse of art as an agent for social change, although this often seems hedged with doubt or irony" MORGAN FALCONER: "Bob and Roberta Smith" Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, [2/10/06], [2]

Patrick Brill also performs music, often with a group known as The Ken Ardley Playboys, who had their first 45 released by Billy Childish on his label Hangman Records. Brill also hosts The Bob & Roberta Smith Radio Show called MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MUSIC which is on Resonance FM.

In March 2005 Bob and Roberta Smith was commissioned to act as curator on a series of five public art projects in the Thames Gateway area of Essex. The projects were collectively named Art U Need and were documented in a diary-format book by Smith in 2007.^[2]

Patrick Brill teaches at the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design, London Metropolitan University.

A sculpture proposed by Bob and Roberta Smith was shortlisted for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London [3].

Exhibitions[link]

2009

• Altermoden, Tate Triennial exhibition, Tate Britain, London

2008

• Tate Christmas Tree, Tate Britain, London
• Fourth Plinth, The National Gallery, London [4]

2007

• Peace Camp, The Brick Lane Gallery, London

2005/06

• The Beautiful Poetry of Bob and Roberta Smith, Hales Gallery, London
• Make Your Own Damn Art, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, UK
• Should I Stay Or Should I Go? (Dilemmas For Margate), Margate High Street, Turner Contemporary

2004

• Help Build The Ruins of Democracy, The Baltic

2003

• The Mobile Reality Creator, Compton Verney.

2002

• Its not easy being a famous Artist, Galerie Praz Delavallade, Paris,France.
• Useless men and Stupid Women, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK.
• Bunch of Cowards, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
• The New York Art Amnesty, Pierogi 2000, New York, USA.
• The Art Amnesty, Deptford X, London, UK

Collections[link]

• Tate Collection / London, UK
• Arts Council Collection / London, UK
• British Council Collection / London, UK
• Southampton City Museum & Art Gallery/ Southampton, UK
• sammlung FIEDE / Aschaffenburg, D
• Goss Michael Foundation / Dallas, US

Bibliography[link]

• Smith, Bob and Roberta. 2007. Art U Need: My Part in the Public Art Revolution. London: Black Dog Publishing
• Smith, Bob and Roberta. 2004. Make Your Own Damn Art. London: Black Dog Publishing

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Official Bob and Roberta Smith Website
• Hales Gallery Bob and Roberta Smith
• The Ken Ardley Playboys Website
• Interview with Myartspace

Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960) is an English artist, known mainly for his ceramic vases and cross-dressing. Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, often appear. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003.

Life and career[link]

Education[link]

Grayson Perry was born in Chelmsford. When he was seven, his father left the family because of his mother's adultery. Perry describes his father's departure as the event that had the largest impact on him in his life.^[1] He subsequently lived at Bicknacre, Essex, with his mother, his stepfather, a younger sister and two stepbrothers, and attended Woodham Ferrers Church of England School.

In his childhood Perry took an interest in drawing and building model aeroplanes, both of which were to become themes in his work.^[2] To escape from a difficult family situation and his stepfather's violence, he retreated to his bedroom or his father’s shed where he became absorbed in a fantasy life, sometimes involving a teddy bear that had become a “surrogate father figure”.^[1]

He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School. Perry took interest in conventional boys' activities, such as model airplanes, motorcycles and girls.^[1] He was in the school's Combined Cadet Corps and wanted to train as an army officer. He was involved in the Chelmsford punk scene in the late 1970s.

At the same time he had unconventional sexual desires and fantasies. He describes his first sexual experience at the age of seven when he tied himself up in his pyjamas.^{[citation needed]} From an early age he liked to dress in women's clothes^[1] and in his teens realized that he was a transvestite.^{[citation needed]} At the age of 15 he moved in with his father's family at Chelmsford, where he began to go out dressed as a woman. When he was discovered by his stepfather he said he would stop, but his mother told everyone about it and a few months later threw him out. He returned to his mother and stepfather at Great Bardfield.

At this time he decided not to join the army and following the encouragement of his art teacher, decided to study art.^[1] He did an art foundation course at Braintree College of Further Education from 1978 to 1979. He studied for a BA in fine art at Portsmouth Polytechnic, graduating in 1982.^[3] He had an interest in film and exhibited his first piece of pottery at the "New Contemporaries" show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1980. In the months following his graduation he joined the "Neo-Naturists", a group started by Christine Binnie to revive the "true sixties spirit – which involves living one’s life more or less naked and occasionally manifesting it into a performance for which the main theme is body paint” (Dawson, p. 81). They put on events at galleries and other venues.

When he went to Portsmouth in 1979, his stepfather told him not to return home. Perry has been estranged from his mother since 1990. After graduating he lived a hand-to-mouth existence in squats, at one point sharing a house with milliner Stephen Jones and pop musician Boy George, the three of them competing to see who could wear the most outrageous outfits to Blitz, a New Romantic nightclub in Covent Garden, London.^[4]

Perry started pottery lessons in September 1983 at the Central Institute where he was taught by Sarah Sanderson. His first exhibition of ceramics was in London in December 1983. He began to develop images and text that represented his experience in terms of “explicit scenes of sexual perversion – sadomasochism, bondage, transvestism”.^[5] For a while he made glazed plates with text because he could not make anything else. He was never motivated by a desire to work in clay as such, rather he chose pottery because studio ceramics was in “thrall to a formal idea”.^[3] Film having proved an inadequate medium for communicating his ideas about gender and society, Perry found in pottery an effective alternative because of “the ways artifice could be deployed to make the innocent or honest pot have a purpose and mean something”.^[3]

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam mounted a solo exhibition of his work in 2002. It was partly for this work that he was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003, the first time it was given to a ceramic artist. He attended the award ceremony dressed as a girl, his alter-ego Claire.

In 2005, Perry featured in a documentary produced by Twofour for Channel 4, Why Men Wear Frocks, in which he examined transvestism and masculinity at the start of the 21st century. Perry talked about his own life as a transvestite and the effect it had on him and his family, frankly discussing its difficulties and pleasures. The documentary won a Royal Television Society award for best network production.

An autobiographical account of his formative years, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (co-written with Wendy Jones), was published in 2006. He was an arts correspondent for The Times until October 2007.^[6]

He lives in London with his wife, the author and psychotherapist Philippa Perry, and they have one daughter, Flo, who was born in 1992.

In 2007, Perry made the following comments on self-censorship in The Times: “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat” (Jihadist violence cows "fearless" artists into silence), a reference to Theo van Gogh.

In 2009, Thames and Hudson published an anthology of his work by Jacky Klein.

Work[link]

Perry's work refers to several ceramic traditions, including Greek pottery and folk art.^[7] He has said, “I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn't got any big pretensions to being great public works of art, and no matter how brash a statement I make, on a pot it will always have certain humility ... [F]or me the shape has to be classical invisible: then you’ve got a base that people can understand”.^[8] His vessels are made by coiling, a traditional method. Most have a complex surface employing many techniques, including “glazing, incision, embossing, and the use of photographic transfers",^[5] which requires several firings. To some he adds sprigs, little relief sculptures stuck to the surface.^[3] The high degree of skill required by his ceramics and their complexity distances them from craft pottery.^[5] It has been said that these methods are not used for decorative effect but to give meaning.^[5] Perry challenges the idea, implicit in the craft tradition, that pottery is merely decorative or utilitarian and cannot express ideas.

In his work Perry reflects upon his upbringing as a boy, his stepfather's anger and the absence of proper guidance about male conduct.^[1] Perry's understanding of the roles in his family is portrayed in Using My Family,1998, where a teddy bear provides affection, and The Guardians,1998, which depicts his mother and stepfather^[2][3]

Much of Perry's work contains sexually explicit content. Some of his sexual imagery has been described as "obscene sadomasochistic sex scenes”.^[5] He also has a reputation for depicting child abuse and yet there are no works depicting sexual child abuse although We've Found the Body of your Child, 2000 hints at emotional child abuse and child neglect. In other work he juxtaposes decorative clichés like flowers with weapons and war. Perry combines various techniques as a “guerrilla tactic”, using the approachable medium of pottery to provoke thought.

As well as ceramics, Perry has worked in printmaking, drawing, embroidery and other textile work, film and performance. He has written a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence.

Perry frequently appears in public dressed as a woman and he has described his female alter-ego variously as “a 19th century reforming matriarch, a middle-England protester for No More Art, an aero-model-maker, or an Eastern European Freedom Fighter,”^[2][3] and “a fortysomething woman living in a Barratt home, the kind of woman who eats ready meals and can just about sew on a button”.^[9] In his work Perry includes pictures of himself in women's clothes: for example Mother of All Battles (1996) is a photograph of "Claire" holding a gun and wearing a dress, in ethnic eastern European style, embroidered with images of war, exhibited at his 2002 Stedelijk show.

One critic has called Perry “The social critic from hell”.^[2][3]

In 2011 Grayson Perry curated the Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at the British Museum.^[10]

His television appearances include BBC's Question Time, Hard Talk, Desert Island Discs and Have I Got News for You. He has also been the subject of a South Bank Show in 2006 ^[11] and was the subject of a Imagine documentary broadcast on 1 November 2011.

References[link]

• Buck, Louisa. The Personal Political Pots of Grayson Perry

External links[link]

• Images and Essay on the Walthamstow Tapestry
• Video interview with Grayson Perry at the Victoria Miro Gallery on www.theartnewspaper.tv
• Victoria Miro Gallery
• Photos of Grayson Perry work
• Saatchi Gallery
• BBC Collective
• "Map of an Englishman"
• "Exquisite Corpse"
• "Image from artist Chris Dooks of Perry in 2011 Brick Lane"

Russell Brand
Russell Brand at the premiere for Arthur in 2011
Birth name	Russell Edward Brand[1]
Born	(1975-06-04) 4 June 1975 (age 37) Grays, Essex, England, UK
Medium	Stand-up, television, film, radio
Nationality	British
Years active	1994–present
Genres	Observational comedy
Influences	Richard Pryor,[2] Bill Hicks,[2] Peter Cook, Lenny Bruce, Tony Hancock, Jack Kerouac, Stewart Lee[3]
Spouse	Katy Perry (m. 2010–2012)
Website	russellbrand.tv

Russell Edward Brand (born 4 June 1975)^[4] is an English comedian, actor, columnist, singer, author and radio/television presenter.

Brand achieved mainstream fame in the UK in 2004 for his role as host of Big Brother spin-off, Big Brother's Big Mouth. His first major film role was in the 2007 film St Trinian's. He became known to American audiences when he got a major role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall which led to a starring role in 2010's Get Him to the Greek. He has also been a voice actor for animated films such as 2010's Despicable Me and the 2011 film Hop. He starred in the 2011 remake of the 1981 Dudley Moore film Arthur.

Brand is noted for his eccentricity and his controversies in the British media, including his dismissal from MTV for dressing up as Osama bin Laden and controversies while presenting at various award ceremonies, as well as his former substance abuse. The 2008 prank telephone calls he made to Andrew Sachs while co-hosting The Russell Brand Show with Jonathan Ross led to his resignation from the BBC and major policy changes in that organisation. His prior drug use, alcoholism and promiscuity influenced his comedic material and public image. He married American pop singer Katy Perry in October 2010, and filed for divorce from her in December 2011; the divorce was finalised in 2012.

Early life[link]

Brand was born in Orsett Hospital, Grays, Essex, England, the only child of Barbara Elizabeth (née Nichols) and photographer Ronald Henry Brand.^[5] Brand's parents separated when he was six months old, and he was raised by his mother; he has described his childhood as isolated and lonely.^[6] When Brand was seven, he was sexually abused by a tutor.^[7] When Brand was eight, his mother contracted uterine cancer; a year later she contracted breast cancer.^[8] Brand stayed with relatives while his mother underwent treatment.^[8] When Brand was 14, he suffered from bulimia nervosa. He left home at age 16 because of differences with his mother's live-in partner.^[8] His mother had lymphoma during this time and he began using illegal drugs such as cannabis, amphetamines, LSD and ecstasy.^[8][9] According to an interview on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday Brand had "a strange relationship with his father, whom he saw sporadically and who took him to visit prostitutes during a trip to the Far East".^[10] After Brand's parents divorced, his father remarried twice.^[11]

Brand attended Grays School Media Arts College, a comprehensive. He made his theatrical debut at the age of 15, playing the role of Fat Sam in a school production of Bugsy Malone, which prompted him to become an actor. He began working as an extra, and applied to study at the Italia Conti Academy. He was accepted, and Essex council funded his tuition for an introductory year, with potential funding for three additional years. Brand joined the Academy in 1991, but was expelled during his introductory year for his bad behaviour and use of drugs. Afterward, Brand had small acting roles in children's show Mud and police drama The Bill.

In 1995, Brand applied for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and Drama Centre London and was accepted to Drama Centre. He was expelled in the final term of his last year for smashing a glass over his head and then stabbing himself in the chest and arms after his hearing a criticism of his performance. After leaving Drama Centre, Brand decided to focus on comedy, and began writing material with Karl Theobald.

Career[link]

Stand-up[link]

Brand's first significant stand-up appearance was at the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year final in 2000. Although he finished fourth, his performance attracted the attention of an agent, Nigel Klarfeld of Gagged and Bound Comedy Ltd.^[12] That year, he also made his Edinburgh debut as one-third of the stand-up show Pablo Diablo's Cryptic Triptych, alongside ventriloquist Mark Felgate and Anglo-Iranian comic Shappi Khorsandi.

Brand performs stand-up at the London Roundhouse, 25 January 2008

In 2004, he took his first one-man show, the confessional Better Now to the Edinburgh Festival, giving an honest account of his heroin addiction. He returned the following year with Eroticised Humour. He launched his first nationwide tour, Shame, in 2006. Brand drew on embarrassing incidents in his own life and the tabloid press's treatment of him since he became famous. The show was released on DVD as Russell Brand: Live.

Brand appeared in a sketch and performed stand-up at the 2006 Secret Policeman's Ball. In March 2007, he co-hosted an evening of the Teenage Cancer Trust gigs with Noel Fielding. In December 2007, Brand performed for HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip as an act in the 2007 Royal Variety Performance.

His second nationwide tour, in 2007, was called Russell Brand: Only Joking and released on DVD as Russell Brand: Doin' Life.

Brand began performing in the US, and recorded a special for Comedy Central titled Russell Brand in New York, which aired in March 2009.^[13] Brand began touring the UK, America and Australia from January to April 2009 on a tour called Russell Brand: Scandalous.^[14] In October, a further four dates that were performed in November were added to raise money for Focus 12, the drug charity for which Brand is a patron.^[15] Russell Brand: Scandalous was released on DVD on 9 November 2009.

Presenting[link]

Brand's first presenting role came in 2000 as a video journalist on MTV. He presented Dancefloor Chart, touring nightclubs in Britain and Ibiza, and hosted the tea-time request show Select. However, Brand was fired after coming to work dressed as Osama bin Laden the day after the 11 September 2001 attacks and bringing his drug dealer to the MTV studios.^[16]

After leaving MTV, Brand starred in RE:Brand, a British documentary and comedy television programme that aimed to take a challenging look at cultural taboos. It was conceived, written, and hosted by Brand, with the help of his comic partner on many projects, Matt Morgan. The series was shown on the now-defunct digital satellite channel UK Play in 2002.

In 2004, he hosted Big Brother's Eforum on E4, a sister show to Big Brother 5. The show gave celebrity guests and the public the chance to have their say on the goings-on inside the Big Brother house. For Big Brother 6, the show's name changed to Big Brother's Big Mouth. Following Celebrity Big Brother 5, Brand said he would not return to host the Big Brother 8 series of Big Brother's Big Mouth. In a statement, Brand thanked all the producers for "taking the risk of employing an ex-junkie twerp" to front the show. Of his time presenting the show, he said, "The three years I've spent on Big Brother's Big Mouth have been an unprecedented joy".^[17]

Brand hosted a one-off special called Big Brother According to Russell Brand, in which Brand took a surreal, sideways look at Big Brother through the ages. On 8 January 2008, Brand was the fifth celebrity to "hijack" the Big Brother house,^[18] in the E4 show Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack. Brand next returned to MTV in the spring of 2006 as presenter of the chat show 1 Leicester Square, which initially aired at 8 pm on Sundays before being shifted to a post-watershed time of 10 pm on Mondays, allowing for a more adult-oriented theme. Guests have included Tom Cruise, Uma Thurman, The Mighty Boosh, and Boy George. A second series began in September 2006 on MTV UK. After Big Brother 7 finished, Brand presented a debate show called Russell Brand's Got Issues, on digital channel E4. The viewing figures for the first episode were seen as disappointing, being beaten by nearly all of E4's main multi-channel rivals despite a big publicity and promotional campaign for the show. The poor ratings prompted the network to repackage the show as The Russell Brand Show and move it to Channel 4.^[19] The first episode was broadcast on 24 November on Channel 4,^[20] and it ran for five weeks.

Brand presented the 2006 NME Awards. At the ceremony Bob Geldof, who was accepting an award from Brand, said at the podium, "Russell Brand – what a cunt", to which Brand replied, "Really it's no surprise [Geldof]'s such an expert on famine. He has after all been dining out on 'I Don't Like Mondays' for 30 years".^[21] Brand hosted the 2007 BRIT Awards and presented Oasis with an "Outstanding Contribution to Music" award at the event.^[22] He also hosted one hour of Comic Relief. On 7 July 2007, he presented at the UK leg of Live Earth at Wembley Stadium, London.

Brand speaking with Courtney Love in Los Angeles, 2008

On 12 December 2007, BBC Four aired Russell Brand On the Road, a documentary presented by Brand and Matt Morgan about the writer Jack Kerouac and his novel On the Road. Brand returned to Channel 4 to host Russell Brand's Ponderland, in which he discussed topics like childhood and science through stand-up comedy. The show first aired on 22 October 2007, and continued for the next five nights. A second series began on 30 October 2008, drawing more than a million viewers, and was broadcast every Thursday night for four weeks, plus a Christmas special that aired in December.

Brand was later announced as the host of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, which drew scepticism from the American media, as he was relatively unknown to the American public. Brand's stint as host of the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards was not without controversy.^[23] At one point, he said the night "marked the launch of a very new Britney Spears era", referring to it as "the resurrection of [Spears]". He also said, "If there was a female Christ, it's Britney".^[24] Brand implored the audience to elect Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and later called then–U.S. President George W. Bush "a retarded cowboy fella", who, in England, "wouldn't be trusted with scissors".^[24][25] He made several references to the purity rings worn by the Jonas Brothers, but apologised for the comments later in the show.^[26] These comments led to Brand receiving death threats by some offended viewers.^[27] Brand claimed that MTV asked him to host the 2009 awards after the ratings for the 2008 show were 20% up from the previous year.^[28] Also in 2008 Brand hosted a one off stand up comedy show called Comedy Live Presents: Russell Brand and Friends shown on Channel 4 on 25 January 2008. Brand hosted the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards on 13 September 2009, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.^[29][30] The ratings for the 2009 show were the best since the 2004 VMAs.^[31] On February 12, 2011, Brand guest hosted an episode of the hit American sketch comedy Saturday Night Live.

Acting[link]

In 2002, Brand appeared on the TV shows Cruise of the Gods and White Teeth. In 2005, he played Tommy in the BBC sitcom Blessed, which was written and directed by Young Ones creator Ben Elton. Brand auditioned for the part of Super Hans in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show; the role eventually went to Matt King.^[32]

In 2007, Brand appeared in Cold Blood for ITV, playing an ex-con called Ally. Brand played a recovering crack addict named Terry in the pilot for the ITV comedy The Abbey, written by Morwenna Banks.^[33]

He voiced an Earth Guardian in Robbie the Reindeer in Close Encounters of the Herd Kind.

Brand had a small role in the 2006 movie Penelope, though his first major film role was as Flash Harry in the 2007 film St Trinian's. He did not reprise the role for the sequel, St. Trinian's II: The Legend of Fritton's Gold.

He achieved American fame when he starred in the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which he played Aldous Snow, the boyfriend of the title character (played by Kristen Bell). Brand received rave reviews for his performance as Snow, and he revealed the character was changed from an author to a rockstar because of his audition.^[34]

Brand starred alongside Adam Sandler in the Disney film Bedtime Stories, which was released on Christmas Day 2008.^[35]

He reprised the role of Aldous Snow for a buddy comedy titled Get Him to the Greek, co-starring Jonah Hill.^[36] He reunited with Forgetting Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stoller and producer Judd Apatow for the film.^[36]

Brand had a role in Julie Taymor's version of William Shakespeare's The Tempest, as Trinculo.^[37][38][39]

In 2010, Brand voiced Dr. Nefario in the Universal movie Despicable Me,^[40] and is set to reprise the role in the sequel in 2013. Brand also guest starred in The Simpsons episode "Angry Dad: The Movie" as himself. Brand also starred in the 2011 live action/CGI animated film Hop, in which he voiced the film's main protagonist E.B. Hop opened at number one at the Friday box office in the US, earning $11.4 million.^[41] The same month, April 2011, he played the title character in a remake of Arthur,^[42] written by Peter Baynham.

Brand is set to star as Lonny in a movie adaption of 80s musical Rock Of Ages, which is to be released in cinemas in June 2012. His other upcoming projects include a remake of Drop Dead Fred.^[43] Brand will also appear in an Oliver Stone film.^[4] Sandler has cast Brand in another film and will produce yet another, co-written by Brand and Matt Morgan, about a con-man posing as a priest; it is tentatively titled Bad Father.^[44][45] and he is also set to star as Fred Mumford in a movie adaption of the hit 70s programme Rentaghost.

Brand has also set up his own production company with his friend Nik Linnen called 'Branded Films' and will be run from the Warner Bros studios in Burbank, California. It has been reported that the company is set up to primarily develop films for Brand himself to star in.^[46]

Radio[link]

Brand's radio career began in early 2002, when he hosted a Sunday afternoon show with Matt Morgan on London's Indie Rock station Xfm. Brand was fired from the job after reading pornographic material live on-air.^[47]

Brand co-hosted The Russell Brand Show beginning in April 2006 on BBC Radio 6 Music. In November 2006, the show transferred to BBC Radio 2 and aired on Saturdays from 9 – 11pm. The show regularly drew about 400,000 listeners.^[48] In an episode of the show broadcast on 18 October 2008, Brand and fellow Radio 2 DJ Jonathan Ross made a series of phone calls to actor Andrew Sachs that crudely discussed Sachs' granddaughter. Sunday tabloid The Mail on Sunday broke the story and regarded the phone calls as obscene. Both presenters were later suspended by the BBC due to the incident,^[49] and Brand resigned from his show.^[50][51] The BBC was later fined £150,000 by Britain's broadcast regulator for airing the calls.^[52]

Brand returned to radio when he and Noel Gallagher hosted a football talk show on 19 April 2009 for talkSPORT which led to a 250% boost in web traffic.^[53][54]

Brand returned to talkSPORT in 9 October 2010, with a Saturday night show that will last 20 weeks. The show will feature clips and back-stage recordings from his Booky Wook 2 promotional tour. Brand will be joined by a host of guests, including the likes of Noel Gallagher and Jonathan Ross.^[55]

Writings[link]

From May 2006 till May 2009, Brand wrote a column for The Guardian that focused on West Ham United and the England national football team. A collection of the columns from May 2006 through June 2007 was released on 15 November 2007 in a book titled Irons in the Fire.^[56] A second collection of the columns from June 2007 through May 2008 was released on 16 October 2008, titled Articles of Faith. The book also includes Brand interviewing Noel Gallagher, James Corden and David Baddiel about football.^[57]

Brand's autobiography, My Booky Wook, published by Hodder & Stoughton, was released on 15 November 2007 and received favourable reviews. The Observer commented that "Russell Brand's gleeful tale of drugs and debauchery in My Booky Wook puts most other celebrity memoirs to shame".^[58]

Brand signed a £1.8 million two-book deal with HarperCollins in June 2008. The first book was Articles of Faith, with the second being Booky Wook 2: This Time It's Personal released on 30 September 2010.^[59][60]

Following the 2011 London riots, Brand wrote a guest column in The Guardian, in which he criticised the Government's response to the rioters as failing to address the root causes.^[61]

Music[link]

Brand recorded a cover of The Beatles song "When I'm Sixty-Four" with composer David Arnold for the 40th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He contributed two songs to the soundtrack of the 2008 film Forgetting Sarah Marshall in which he appeared as Aldous Snow, lead singer of the fictional band Infant Sorrow.^[62] He reprised his role as Aldous Snow in Get Him to the Greek and recorded sixteen songs for the soundtrack.

Brand appeared on the 2010 version of 3 Lions alongside Robbie Williams.^[63] He also appeared in the music video to Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds's single AKA... What a Life! playing a drug pusher.

Personal life[link]

Russell Brand in April 2011

Katy Perry, Brand's ex-wife, in October 2011.

Brand lives in Los Angeles.^[64] He had been a vegetarian since the age of 14,^[65] and became a vegan on October 24, 2011.^[66] PETA named him 2011's Sexiest Vegetarian.^[67] He dresses in a flamboyant bohemian fashion, describing himself as looking like an "S&M Willy Wonka".^[68] He has bipolar disorder,^[69] has suffered from bulimia,^[65] and also went through a period of self-harming.^[70] Brand has shown interest in the Hare Krishna Movement and chants the Hare Krishna mantra for drug rehabilitation.^[71] During an interview with Ellen DeGeneres on her show in October 2010, Brand talked about his love of Transcendental Meditation.^[72][73]

Relationships[link]

After a string of high-profile relationships, Brand developed a reputation in the media as a ladies' man. His dating life won him The Sun's Shagger Of The Year award in 2006,^[74] 2007,^[75] and 2008. The award has been renamed "The Russell Brand Shagger of the Year Award" in honour of Brand having won three years in a row.^[76]

Brand first met American singer/songwriter Katy Perry in summer 2009 when Perry filmed a cameo for Brand's film Get Him to the Greek (although the cameo did not make it into the final cut of the film).^[77] Brand and Perry began dating after meeting again several months later in September 2009^[78] at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, where Brand, as host, remarked "Katy Perry didn't win an award and she's staying at the same hotel as me, so she's gonna need a shoulder to cry on. So in a way, I'm the real winner tonight." Perry says she threw a bottle of water at Brand to get his attention and then they went clubbing together the same night.^[79] The couple became engaged in December 2009 when Brand proposed to Perry while on a holiday in India.^[80][81][82] The couple married on 23 October 2010 in a traditional Hindu ceremony, near the Ranthambhore tiger sanctuary in Rajasthan, India, the same location where Brand proposed.^[83][84] After 14 months of marriage, Brand filed for divorce from Perry on 30 December 2011 in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences.^[85][86] After Brand and Perry reached an agreement on financial issues, a judge granted the divorce request in February 2012; however the divorce will not become effective until July 2012 due to California law requiring a six-month wait.^[87]

Activism[link]

Brand and several other celebrities wrote to The Independent (as supporters of the Hoping Foundation) to condemn Israel's assault on Gaza, and the "cruel and massive loss of life of the citizens of Gaza".^[88] In February 2009, Brand and several other entertainers wrote to The Times defending Bahá'í leaders then on trial in Iran.^[89] In April 2009, he attended the 2009 G-20 London summit protests and spoke to the press.^[90][91]

Substance abuse and legal issues[link]

Brand is a former heroin and sex addict and a recovering alcoholic. He has had numerous run-ins with the police, having been arrested 12 times.^[92][93] Brand was ejected from the Gilded Balloon in Edinburgh,^[94] and he infamously introduced his drug dealer to Kylie Minogue during his time at MTV.^[95] He has abstained from drug use since 2002 and is now a patron of the addiction charity Focus 12.^[96] His abandonment of drugs and alcohol was instigated by his agent, John Noel, after Brand was caught taking heroin in a bathroom during his Christmas party. Brand regularly attends AA and NA meetings^[97] and cites his practice of Transcendental Meditation as a significant factor in his recovery from drug addiction.^[98]