Eddie Izzard

Eddie Izzard
Edward John, better known as Eddie Izzard, was born on February 2, 1962 in Aden, Yemen. He is the youngest son of an English couple?his mother Dorothy Ella, who was a midwife and nurse, and father Harold John Izzard, who was an accountant who was working in Yemen with British Petroleum. Eddie was only a year old when his family moved back to UK and in the March of 1968, he lost his mother of cancer.

His roots as a comedian were sown at this time when after his mother's death, he found solace in comedy. With a rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime style of comedy, John "Eddie" Izzard is a double Emmy-winning English stand-up comedian and actor. In addition to this, he is also a television, stage and film actor and is active in charity work. Monty Python, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor, and the early Benny Hill were his particular favorites, and great sources of inspiration as well.

His is a typical movie success story from being ingloriously kicked out of the accountancy degree source at the University of Sheffield, to becoming a street performer in Europe and the US, then to moving his ct to stand up comedy venues in Britain, all the while sorting out and refining his material, hence earning recognition.

Style of Comedy
Izzard's style of comedy is almost entirely his own; however glimpses of Monty Python can be felt here and there. Due to his problem of dyslexia, he cannot work from a script. 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 humor. He also sometimes verbally engages with the audience. Mime and mimicry are his special talents.

Success as a comedian
Despite the fact that he only rarely performs his stand-up act on television, as he says 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, Izzard has made for himself a major name as a comedian. They also brought him British Comedy Awards in 1993 (for Live at the Ambassadors) and 1996 (for Definite Article). His breakthrough in the United States 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 U.S., the U.K. and France.

In 2005, he promoted recycling for the British government and provided the voiceover, and in January 2006, the U.S. television network FX announced the production of a new drama series co-written by Izzard called The Riches. Moreover, Izzard also performed with Scottish musician Midge Ure at Live8 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Theatre
Izzard has also been very interested in doing theatre, appeared in 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 in 1994.