Steve Coogan
Steve Coogan
Stephen John "Steve" Coogan is an English actor, stand-up comedian, impressionist, writer, and producer. He began his career in the 1980s, working as a voice artist on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image and providing voiceovers for television advertisements. In the early 1990s, he began creating original comic characters, leading him to win the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 1999, he co-founded the production company Baby Cow Productions...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth14 October 1965
CityMiddleton, England
There's something quite joyful about doing comedy which doesn't really need much analysis. I'm not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.
My father worked for IBM. My mother raised us kids. There were six of us, and a couple of extra foster kids at any given time.
I went on tour and I wouldn't say I was bored with the Perrier show but I started doing this stuff that wasn't as charming as the Perrier show.
It's a post-modern classic written way before there was any modernism to be post about.
If you chase something too desperately, it eludes you.
Two thousand years ago, the Holy family had a ramble from Nazareth to Bethlehem - in much the same way as I'm having a ramble from Norwich to Swaffham. Although I'm not comparing myself to Jesus - I don't want to get bogged down in that whole controversy again.
I think I'm good with actors. I like directing actors. I also like to show up and just do an acting gig. Where I'm just a hired gun, I don't have to have an opinion on anything.I never got involved in all this stuff because I wanted to control stuff; I got involved in writing and producing because I wasn't getting interesting acting gigs. In a way I'm grateful that I didn't get interesting roles, because it made me pull my finger out and do some work.
If things don't come easy to you, you have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
The truth is somewhere in the middle of funny and serious.
I'm just a good Catholic boy - I do naughty things and feel guilty about them.
Hacking into a victim of crime's phone is a sort of poetically elegant manifestation of a modus operandi the tabloids have.
I find impressionists slightly annoying, really.
I happen to have a public profile. Ditto newspaper editors. It's a result of what I do, not an end.
I have never wanted to be famous, as such - fame is a by-product.