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
What tends to happen in most movies is that strip clubs are used as a short hand for unsympathetic, sleazy people. And that's just a lazy cliché.
That's what gives people hope - that you can still love someone from afar and you can still have those feelings across an ocean.
The one thing that gives you faith is the fact that people can be apart physically but they can still have an emotional connection.
No one has a monopoly on wisdom, and even for people who aren't religious, you can learn things from religious people.
All those people who go around saying Life begins at forty, they're notable by their absence. The nerve.
I've met people who've dismissed me, and then they find out that they like my work, and suddenly their attitude changes toward me. And I think that's very funny and very human. But it's also very unattractive.
The best feeling in the world is performing in front of a live audience who like what you're doing. I can understand why people become dictators just because of the thrill they get making the speeches.
I love people who are openly gay in theatre, because they have license to do what they like, and there's a kind of artistic liberal tolerance thing that goes on.
I'm just attracted to playing people who are ostensible unlikable. That's not to say that there's something in there that makes you care. It might be that you just find them so awful that you just can't stop watching, like a car crash.
I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.
If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
It may seem like improv because it flows quite naturally, and a little bit of leeway for improvisation is good, but you have to be judicious with it. So it's good, but sometimes people deify it. You can't improvise your way out of a paper hat.
But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
Even great people are always slightly disappointing, which is generally what makes them interesting.