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Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (born October 13, 1971) is a British Jewish comedian, writer and a Golden Globe-winning actor most noted for his comic characters Ali G (a junglist-hip hop gangsta wannabe from suburban Staines), Borat (a Kazakh reporter), and Bruno (a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashion reporter). In his routine, Baron Cohen typically conducts interviews with respected figures while posing as one of his characters for comic effect. His interviewees believe that the ostensible interviews are sincere and legitimate. His work has been recognized with several Emmy nominations, an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, a BAFTA award and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the feature film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. In 2009 he is scheduled to star in the feature film Dinner for Schmucks, based on a screenplay by comedian Andy Borowitz. On December 21, 2007, Baron Cohen announced that, because the public had become too familiar with the characters, he was going to retire Borat and Ali G. Riotous, rude, controversial, even racist (or "racialist," as he might say)—these have been just a few adjectives used to describe the cultural phenomenon Ali G, the creation of British-born actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Invented for the short-lived British sketch comedy series, “The 11 O’Clock Show” (Channel 4, 1998-2000), Ali G made an immediate impact as "Channel 4’s official voice of youth." Ali G’s often hilarious interviews with unsuspecting politicians and celebrities became an immediate hit with UK viewers. So believable was Cohen as Ali G that many thought the former didn’t exist. Some politicians, including Labour party member Tony Benn, left studio interviews believing the ignorant rapper-wannabe was genuine, though Ali G’s comment to Benn that Margaret Thatcher was a communist did come off as suspect. But for Cohen, his alter ego proved to be more than just a comedic vehicle—it was the beginning of a bright and prosperous career. Cohen was born on Oct. 13, 1971. A comfortable home life afforded him the opportunity to attend the best schools, including Haberdasher-Askes Boys’ School and later Cambridge University. It was at Haberdasher that Cohen met Dan Mazer, who later became a producer during Cohen’s reign as Ali G. Meanwhile, in 1989, Cohen joined the Habonim Jewish Youth Group and appeared in Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues”, thus igniting a passion for acting. But his acting plans soon went on hold, as Cohen left London for Israel, where he spent a year at the Rosh Hanikra Kibbutz learning more about his roots and faith. Baron Cohen, the youngest of three sons, was born in Hammersmith, London, England, to an Orthodox Jewish family. His mother, Daniella (née Weiser), teaches at a school of movement and was born in Israel. His father, Gerald Baron Cohen, originally from Wales, owns a menswear shop in Piccadilly. Baron Cohen's paternal grandfather was born in Pontypridd and his maternal grandmother, who now lives in Haifa, Israel, was an acclaimed ballet dancer from Germany. His paternal great grandfather was born in Kaunas. His brother Erran Baron Cohen, a composer and trumpet player with Middle Eastern influences and a founding member of the British electronica world-music group Zöhar, lent his talents to the Borat film with the song "O Kazakhstan" and others. Sacha Baron Cohen's cousin Simon Baron-Cohen is a leading researcher in the study of autism spectrum disorders (including Asperger syndrome). Upon returning to Britain, Cohen attended Cambridge, where he worked toward a degree in history while continuing his focus on acting. In 1991, he played Doolittle the Dustman in a production of “My Little Fairy”; he played the lead in a West End production of “Fiddler on the Roof”; and in 1993, Cohen had a singing role in “My Fair Lady”. Later in the decade, Cohen made the jump from stage to screen on the Paramount Comedy Channel. Cohen appeared on the station as filler in between programmes, where he developed his skill for embarrassing interviews—a later hallmark of Ali G. The Baron Cohens enjoyed a high standard of living. Sacha attended Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, a privileged private school in Elstree. The same school was also attended by fellow Jewish comedians Matt Lucas and David Baddiel. He also attended Dulwich College (Dulwich - South London). He then attended Christ's College, Cambridge where he studied history under Niall Ferguson and wrote his thesis on Jewish involvement in the American Civil Rights movement, with emphasis on the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi. At the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, Baron Cohen acted in plays such as Cyrano de Bergerac and Fiddler on the Roof, in which he played Tevye. His long-time collaborator Dan Mazer also attended the University of Cambridge and was a member of the Cambridge Footlights, and although Baron Cohen himself was not a member, he performed in at least one Footlights presentation as well as other shows (including singing the part of Guy Fawkes in the musical Gunpowder, Treason and Plot). Baron Cohen first acted in theatrical productions featuring the Socialist-Zionist youth movement Habonim Dror. He spent a year in Israel at Kibbutz Rosh HaNikra and Kibbutz Beit HaEmek as part of the Shnat Habonim Dror, before matriculating to university. According to Baron Cohen, "I wouldn't say that I am a religious Jew, but I'm still proud to be Jewish." However, he keeps kosher and generally observes the Jewish Sabbath, refusing to answer the phone on Shabbat. Baron Cohen frequently speaks in Hebrew and Polish while playing the anti-Semitic character Borat. He also sang the lyrics from an old Hebrew folk song in an episode of Da Ali G Show. Additionally he identifies his country's greatest scientist, who he says discovered a woman's brain is the same size as that of a squirrel, as "Dr Yarmulke". (A yarmulke, or kippah, is the skullcap worn by Jews.) In the early 1990s Baron Cohen was hosting a weekly program on Windsor cable television's local broadcasts alongside Carol Kirkwood, who has become the BBC anchor for weather broadcasts. He was fired by Windsor TV for broadcasting a lewd presentation for St. Valentine's day. In 1995, Channel 4 was planning a replacement for its series The Word, and disseminated an open call for new television presenters. Baron Cohen sent in a tape of himself in the character of Kristo, a fictional television reporter from Albania (who developed into the Kazakhstani Borat), which caught the attention of a producer. Baron Cohen bided his time by working for a Swindon-based television company; during this period he made his first feature film appearance. He also presented the Teenage program F2F. After a brief office-work career which included a stint at investment bank Goldman Sachs, Baron Cohen went back into acting, appearing during 2-minute sketches as his fashion reporter Bruno on The Paramount Comedy Channel during 1998. He shot to fame when his comic character Ali G, an idiotic Junglist, started appearing on The Eleven O'Clock Show on Channel 4, which first went to air September 8, 1998. Da Ali G Show began in 2000, and won the BAFTA for Best Comedy in the following year. Also in 2000, Ali G appeared in Madonna's music video "Music". In 2002, Ali G was the central character in the feature film Ali G Indahouse, in which he is elected to the British Parliament and foils a plot to bulldoze a community centre in his hometown, Staines. His television show was exported to the United States in 2003 (with new episodes set in America) for HBO. Ali G's interviews with famous people (often politicians) gained notoriety partly because the subjects were not privy to the joke that Ali G, rather than being a real interviewer, was a comedic character played by Baron Cohen. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Baron Cohen would always enter the interview area in character as Ali G, carrying equipment and appearing to be an insignificant crew-member. He would be with a suited man, who the interviewee naturally thought was the interviewer. Baron Cohen, as Ali G, would sit down to begin conducting the interview by asking the interviewee some preliminary questions. The interviewee, however, would remain under the impression that the smartly-dressed director would be conducting the interview until short notice prior to cameras rolling: this would grant an advantage of surprise, whereby the interviewee would be less likely to opt out of the Ali interview prior to its commencement. Baron Cohen's second alter ego is 'Bruno' (sometimes written Brüno), a gay Austrian fashion show presenter, who often lures his subjects into unwittingly making provocative statements and engaging in embarrassing behavior, as well as leading them to contradict themselves, often in the same interview. Bruno asks the subjects to answer 'yes or no' questions with either "Vassap" (yes), or "Ich don't think so" (no), or sometimes "Ach, ja!" (oh yes!) or "Nicht, nicht" (not, not). In at least one segment on Da Ali G Show he encouraged his guest to answer questions with either "Keep them in the ghetto" or "Train to Auschwitz". Bruno's main comedic satire pertains to the vacuity and inanity of the fashion and clubbing world, so for instance the aforesaid indifference towards potentially upsetting Holocaust references is intended to reveal a certain insularity surrounding the cultural context of the interviewee. Plans are underway for Baron Cohen to bring Bruno to the big screen, and after an intense bidding war that included such Hollywood powerhouses as DreamWorks, Sony, and 20th Century Fox; Universal Pictures paid a reported $42.5 million for the rights to the movie. According to insiders, Baron Cohen himself is getting paid $13 million upfront, and will also receive 15% of the box office take. That means if the film (tentatively titled "Brüno") does as well as "Borat", Baron Cohen stands to make approximately $30 million. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, a feature film with "Borat" at the centre, was screened at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and released in the United Kingdom November 2, 2006, in the United States on November 3, 2006 and Australia November 23, 2006. The film is about a journey across the United States in an ice cream van, in which the main character is obsessed with the idea of marrying Pamela Anderson. The film is a mockumentary which includes interviews with various American citizens that poke fun at the hobgoblins of American culture, including sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, jingoism and Baywatch. It debuted at the #1 spot in the US, taking in an estimated $26.4 million in just 837 theatres averaging $31,600 per theatre, the fourth highest per-theatre average of all time for movies opening wide (500 screens or more), behind Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Spider-Man. It easily outdistanced the expected #1 movie of the weekend, Disney's The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, which earned an estimated $20 million in 3,458 cinemas. Baron Cohen won the 2007 Golden Globe in the "Best Actor - Musical or Comedy" category, his sixth such award. Although Borat was up for "Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy," the film lost to Dreamgirls. On 23 January 2007, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He shared his nomination with the film's co-writers, Ant Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer, and Todd Phillips. Aside from the comic elements of his characters, Baron Cohen's performances are interpreted by some as reflecting uncomfortable truths about his audience. He juxtaposes his own Jewish lineage with the anti-Semitism of his character Borat. In one sketch from the TV show (and as such, not included in the film), Borat performs at a small-town USA bar singing an anti-Semitic song called 'In My Country There is Problem' (including lyrics such as "Throw the Jew down the well!", "You must grab [the Jew] by his horns" and "[The Jews] take everybody['s] money; they never give it back"), with many in the bar singing along. Although the character Borat is Kazakh, he frequently begins segments with Polish expressions "Jak się masz?" (How are you?), "Dzień dobry" (Good day) and "Dziekuję" (Thank you). His use of "Boutrous" was used on BBC's The Fast Show sketches, and Mahir "I Kiss You" Çağrı publicly claims much of the Borat character was based on him. Borat's favorite singer is Korki Buchek. He sings the famous song "Bing Bang". In one scene of the film, Borat encounters some men from Atlanta, Georgia. When asked of his favourite music, he shares the name Korki Buchek and proceeds to sing a song, which causes the men from Atlanta to laugh at him. In 2007 Cohen published a travel guide as Borat, with dual titles: Borat: Touristic Guidings To Minor Nation of U.S. and A. and Borat: Touristic Guidings To Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan., however on 21st Dec it was announced Borat would retire'. Baron Cohen has often been confused with the identity of one of his characters. When he posed as Borat to host the MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon, the central Hungarian news wire agency MTI reported that the host was 'Borat Sagdiyev'. As most Hungarian newspapers and television networks take MTI as their official source, the misinterpretation of the character spread rapidly in Hungary, with some sources (such as TV2) emphasizing that a Kazakhstani news reporter hosted the awards, while others (such as Index.hu) noticed and pointed out the error. As a general rule, Baron Cohen rarely does interviews out of character. However, in 2004, he did the talk show circuit appearing as himself on The Late Show with David Letterman, The Opie and Anthony Show, The Howard Stern Show,[36] and others in order to promote the upcoming season of his show on HBO. He was also interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered. He also did an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, published in November 2006, that the magazine labelled as "his only interview as himself". He also appeared in an interview out of character with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on 4 January 2007. "Borat" Director Larry Charles explains that Baron Cohen generally appears in character partly to "protect his weakness", by focusing public interest on his characters rather than himself. His other reason, Newsweek claims, is that Baron Cohen is fiercely private: "...according to the UK press, his publicists denied not only that he attended a party for the London premiere of "Borat", but also that a party even occurred.". It was reported online that Baron Cohen may play Freddie Mercury in a biographical film. However, his publicist has declared that Baron Cohen will not be playing the part. Cohen was hired on to the “11 O’Clock Show” after sending the producers a tape of him posing as an Albanian reporter interviewing fox hunters, and Ali G was soon born. In 1999, Cohen won Best Newcomer in the British Comedy Awards, which led to his own programme, “Da Ali G Show” (Channel 4, 2000). On the new show, Cohen created a new character, Borat, Kazakhstan's top media personality, while further developing Ali G’s comical antics. Cohen continued to receive accolades, including Personality of the Year in 2000 from the TV Quick Awards and Best TV Entertainment Production at the 2000 Ethnic Multicultural Awards, despite complains from critics that Ali G was racist. In 2001, Ali G appeared in Madonna’s music video “Music”, in which the two went head-to-head on turntables in cartoon form. Both Ali G and Borat soon crossed the Atlantic Ocean, where “Da Ali G Show” (HBO, 2003- ) appeared on American cable television. Despite the new location, Ali G kept up old tricks, including his famed interviews with unsuspecting political figures. In one memorable interview, Ali G pushed former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan into admitting that Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” (2003) was only slightly better than “Lethal Weapon 3” (1992). Ali G’s popularity led Cohen to make a feature film with the character, “Ali G Indahouse” (2002). In the movie, the clueless rapper gets hand-picked by an unscrupulous member of Parliament intent on upsetting the Prime Minister in the next election. Despite his obvious ignorance, Ali G finds himself climbing the political ladder. The movie was released in the UK in 2002, but never found it’s way to the States. Meanwhile, Cohen began developing a remake of the French feature, “Le Diner de Cons” (1998), tentatively titled “Dinner for Schmucks,” which was set-up at Dreamworks. Cohen next provided his vocal talents to “Madagascar” (2005), Dreamworks' animated adventure about four zoo animals who escape and inadvertently find themselves in Africa where the city slickers struggle to survive in the wild. He then costarred opposite Will Ferrell in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” (2006), playing an obnoxious French Formula One driver who becomes the number one rival to a go-for-broke race car driver (Ferrell) hell-bent on finishing first or not finishing at all. Cohen made his biggest impact when he brought Borat Sagdiyev to the big screen with “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” (2006), an hysterical mockumentary that followed the crude and backwards Kazakh journalist on a trip to the United States. Zigzagging his way across the country on his way to marry Pamela Anderson after watching an episode of “Baywatch,” Borat engaged unsuspecting people in situations designed to help him learn more about America. Most of the events and people depicted in the film were real, with many of the dupes reporting later that they were thoroughly convinced they were talking to a Kazakh journalist, though some were embarrassed at being made to look the fool. Prior to the film’s release, Cohen lobbied the public like a politician hot on the campaign trail, appearing on any and all talk shows that would have him—“The Today Show,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “The Late Show with David Letterman,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and even Howard Stern’s Sirius radio show. Despite objections from the official government of Kazakhstan, which complained about the film’s negative depiction of the country, “Borat” took the number one spot at the box office with a $26 million take in less than 900 theaters. Twentieth Century Fox limited its theater count opening weekend because of the loud complaints that echoed across Eurasia, but realized a gross mistake was made when the per-theater average for “Borat” topped $31,000. Following its triumphant initial release, “Borat” opened wide in 2400 theaters its second week, with Cohen taking a drunken victory lap around the talk show circuit to revel in his box office victory and ask Matt Lauer on “The Today Show” where to get the best prostitutes. Meanwhile, Cohen had another character, Bruno, a gay Austrian TV reporter, set to be turned into a feature film. Though lesser known than Borat and Ali G, Cohen’s creation prompted Universal Pictures to pony up $42.5 million to make the film. Surprisingly, Cohen received a Golden Globe Award nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for “Borat.” Even more surprisingly, he won. Cohen gave perhaps the best acceptance speech of the evening, describing how in his journeys across the country he saw “[a]n ugly side of America. A side of America that rarely sees the light of day. I refer, of course, to the anus and testicles of my co-star Ken Davitian.” Indeed. Baron Cohen is engaged to Australian actress Isla Fisher, and the pair plan to wed in a traditional Jewish ceremony. After several years of study, Isla has converted to Judaism, and has received the approval of Baron Cohen's observant Jewish parents. On October 19, 2007 Isla gave birth to a baby girl named Olive in Los Angeles, California. |
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