Sacha Noam Baron Cohen

Sacha Baron Cohen is an actor, comedian, screenwriter, director, and film producer. He has created and portrayed a number of highly memorable fictional characters Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gerhard, and Admiral General Aladeen.

It was embarrassing to admit to other people that I wanted to be a comedian, because I was essentially telling people that I thought I was funny. That’s as embarrassing as someone saying, I want to be a model. You risk people saying You’re far too ugly to become a model.

So I really kept my ambition to perform hidden, though I ended up going to Cambridge in order to join the Cambridge Footlights drama club. I was denied entry for three years, but joined up in year four. I did a number of dramatic productions — Cyrano de Bergerac, Fiddler on the Roof, Tamburlaine the Great — so I had to learn how to act. That ended up being useful later in my career.

I think I think in the moment. So when I'm in character, I'm in character, and I'm obviously thinking about what's going on around me, but it's easier to do stuff when you're in character.

I think you can be politically incorrect, but there's some responsibility with that. You've got to make sure that you are not condoning or bolstering any racial or other stereotypes.

Like his idol Peter Sellers, he adopts a variety of accents and guises for his characters, and rarely appears out of character.

It's nice to be important, but it's also important to be nice. Never forget that.

His other work includes voicing King Julien XIII in the Madagascar film series (2005–2012) and appearing in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Hugo (2011) and Les Misérables (2012).

I have been incredibly fortunate to be able to work with good directors and for me it's not really a plan each time I'm on a set with one of them; I think about what I can learn from them because I'm very aware that my filmmaking skills are very modest.

He made a cameo as a BBC News Anchor in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013). In 2016 he played an English football hooligan brother of an MI6 spy in the comedy film Grimsby and co-starred as Time in the fantasy sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Two years later he created and starred in Who Is America? (2018) for Showtime, his first television project since Da Ali G Show, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy. 

In 2019 he was Executive Producer on hard hitting Netflix six part drama Spy, in which he also starred, playing the role of Eli Cohen. 

I saw Eli Cohen, as he was written in the show, as an extreme version of myself - The stakes were higher for him, because the price of failure is imprisonment and execution. Eli Cohen was, in that sense, the greatest method actor of the last century.

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