Biography for
Sacha Baron Cohen More at IMDbPro »

Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (born 13 October 1971) is an English stand-up comedian, actor, writer, voice artist, and comedian. He is most widely known for his portrayal of three unorthodox fictional characters: Ali G, Borat, and Brüno. In his routines, Baron Cohen's characters interact with unsuspecting people who do not realize they are being set up for comic situations and self-revealing ridicule.

Baron Cohen's work has been recognised 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. After the release of the movie Borat, Baron Cohen stated that because the public had become too familiar with the characters, he would retire Borat and Ali G. Similarly, after the release of Brüno, he has stated he would also retire the title character.

Early life

Family

Baron Cohen was born Sacha Noam Baron Cohen in Hammersmith, West London, England. His mother, Daniella (née Weiser), was born in Israel, while his father, Gerald, was originally from Pontypridd, Wales. Sacha is the second of three sons, with elder brother Erran and younger brother Amnon. His family is Jewish. His maternal grandmother, who lives in Haifa, Israel, trained as a ballet dancer in Germany. Erran is a composer and has worked on several of his films. Internationally renowned autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen is his cousin.

Education

Baron Cohen first attended St Columba's College Prep School, St Albans, Hertfordshire, before moving on to attend Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, a private school in Elstree, Hertfordshire, near London. He went on to the University of Cambridge, entering Christ's College, Cambridge, where he read history under Niall Ferguson and wrote his dissertation 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 Fiddler on the Roof (in which he played Tevye) and Cyrano de Bergerac. While at Cambridge, he performed in Habonim Dror Jewish theatre performances.

Early roles

After leaving university, Baron Cohen worked for a time as a fashion model, appearing in many fashion magazines. By the early 1990s, he was hosting a weekly programme on Windsor cable television's local broadcasts with Carol Kirkwood, who later became a BBC weather forecaster. 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 Kazakh Borat Sagdiyev), which caught the attention of a producer. Baron Cohen hosted Pump TV from 1995–1996. In 1996, he began presenting the youth chat programme F2F for Granada Talk TV. The late nineties saw Baron Cohen make his first feature film appearance in the British comedy The Jolly Boys' Last Stand, then in 2000 Baron Cohen played the part of Super Greg for a series of TV advertisements for Lee Jeans which never aired, yet the website for Super Greg created an internet sensation. He also attended Ecole Philippe Gaulier, studying under Philippe Gaulier whom he credits with enabling him to find the play and pleasure to create characters such as Ali G and Borat.

Characters

Ali G

Baron Cohen appeared during 2-minute sketches as his fashion reporter Brüno on The Paramount Comedy Channel during 1998. He shot to fame when his comic character Ali G, an uneducated, boorish junglist, started appearing on the British television show The 11 O'Clock Show on Channel 4, which first went to air 8 September 1998.

Da Ali G Show began in 2000, and won the BAFTA for Best Comedy in the following year. Also in 2000, Baron Cohen as Ali G appeared as the limousine driver in Madonna's 2000 video "Music", directed by Jonas Åkerlund, who was also responsible for directing the titles for Da Ali G Show.

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 there, 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 comic 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 arrive with a suited man, whom 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.

The resulting willingness of Baron Cohen's targets to answer his frequently risqué questions often created surprising conversations. Interviewees have included:

• astronaut Buzz Aldrin
• politician and consumer advocate Ralph Nader
• writer Gore Vidal
• real estate mogul Donald Trump
• former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop
• basketball players Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O'Neal, Steve Nash, Kobe Bryant, Richard Jefferson, Tim Duncan, Ben Wallace and Robert Horry
• former US Secretary of State James Baker III
• former US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh
• businessman and billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed
• Professor Heinz Wolff
• former US Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
• political commentator Pat Buchanan
• Professor Noam Chomsky
• footballer David Beckham and his wife, ex-Spice Girl Victoria Beckham, for the UK's Comic Relief
• former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (whom Baron Cohen, in his Ali G character, referred to as 'Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali')
• former Conservative Party MP Neil Hamilton
• journalist Andy Rooney
• Labour politician Tony Benn
• DUP politician Sammy Wilson

Baron Cohen is a supporter of Comic Relief and as Ali G has hosted some interviews for the benefit of the charity.

Borat

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 on 2 November 2006, in the United States on 3 November 2006 and Australia 23 November 2006. The film is about a journey across the United States in an ice cream truck, 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 American culture, as well as 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.

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, Sy Mordecai Finesto, 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 2007, Baron 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.

On 21 December 2007, Baron Cohen announced he was retiring the character of Borat.

Brüno

Another alter ego Sacha Baron Cohen performed as is 'Brüno', a flamboyantly gay allegedly-19-year-old Austrian fashion show presenter, who often lures his subjects, unwittingly, into making provocative statements and engaging in embarrassing behaviour, as well as leading them to contradict themselves, often in the same interview. Brüno asks the subjects to answer 'yes or no' questions with either "Vassup" (whats up), or "Ich don't think so" (No), or sometimes "Ach, ja!" (Ah yes!) or "Nicht, nicht" ("Nicht" means "not" in German). In 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". Brüno's main comedic satire pertains to the vacuity and inanity of the fashion and clubbing world. In May 2009, at the MTV Movie Awards, Baron Cohen appeared as 'Brüno' wearing a white angel costume, a white jock strap, white go-go boots and white wings, and did an aerial stunt where he dropped from a height (using wires) onto Eminem, Baron Cohen landed on his lap and his rear in Eminem's face, prompting Eminem to exit the venue with fellow rappers of D12. Eminem later admitted to staging the stunt with Baron Cohen.

Film

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. A number of shill companies and Web sites were created in order to draw potential interviewees into interviews by creating an illusion of legitimacy. The film was released in July 2009.

Performer versus characters

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) emphasising that a Kazakh news reporter hosted the awards, while others (such as Index.hu) noticed and pointed out the error.

Controversies

Baron Cohen has encountered many controversies regarding some of his comic characters: In an interview with former British MP Neil Hamilton in 2000, Ali G offered Hamilton what was allegedly cannabis, which Hamilton accepted and smoked, creating some minor controversy in the British media.

At the 2006 MTV Movie Awards, Borat introduced Gnarls Barkley's performance of "Crazy", where he made a comment about Jessica Simpson, saying that he liked her mouth and that he could see it clearly through her denim pants. His appearance was cut from subsequent rebroadcasts.

Baron Cohen has had some trouble because of racist or prejudice comments his characters have made (see Da Ali G Show). HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer has replied to criticism concerning Baron Cohen's characters: 'Through his alter-egos, he delivers an obvious satire that exposes people's ignorance and prejudice in much the same way All in the Family did years ago.' Regarding his portrayal as the anti-Semitic Borat, Baron Cohen says the segments are a "dramatic demonstration of how racism feeds on dumb conformity, as much as rabid bigotry", rather than a display of racism by Baron Cohen himself. "Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice", Baron Cohen explains. Addressing the same topic in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, Baron Cohen says "...and I think that's quite an interesting thing with Borat, which is people really let down their guard with him because they're in a room with somebody who seems to have these outrageous opinions. They sometimes feel much more relaxed about letting their own outrageous, politically incorrect, prejudiced opinions come out."

Baron Cohen, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, says he also wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference in that genocide. "When I was in university, there was this major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw, who said, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic." Regarding the enthusiastic response to his song, "Throw The Jew Down The Well", he says, "Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism."

Baron Cohen walked onto the runway during the Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada fashion show in Milan on 26 September 2008. In the character of his latest alter-ego Brüno, he was wearing a costume made out of velcro. He appeared on the stage with a blanket and items of clothing stuck to his velcro suit. Lights were turned off while security intervened and escorted him off the stage, and the fashion show resumed normally shortly thereafter. Baron Cohen and his team allegedly accessed the fashion show using fake IDs.

During an appearance on Late Show with David Letterman, Baron Cohen stated he was restricted from answering David Letterman's question as to how he managed to get an interview with Pat Buchanan while in character as Ali G due to pending "legal reasons".

While introducing an award at the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, Baron Cohen was lowered upside-down from the rafters dressed as an angel right into rapper Eminem's lap after an apparently staged problem with his wire harness. Baron Cohen had only a jockstrap on underneath and fully exposed his buttocks in Eminem's face. Eminem swore repeatedly, demanding that his friends, members of D12, each of whom were sitting next to Eminem, remove Baron Cohen, then left the auditorium. Baron Cohen then announced the winner (Zac Efron) while still hanging from the wires above the stage. It was later revealed that Eminem and Baron Cohen had planned the gag together.

Pauly Shore claimed, in 2009, that Baron Cohen's film, Brüno, was "stolen from Shore's 'mockumentary'", as the film Brüno had started production after the start of production for Adopted and also featured the main character adopting a child from a Third World nation.

Future projects

It has been confirmed that Baron Cohen will star as Freddie Mercury of the rock band Queen in an upcoming film about the period in the band's history from 1971 leading up to the Live Aid concert in 1985. It was Baron Cohen himself who contacted screenwriter Peter Morgan with the idea of portraying the flamboyant lead singer. TIME commented with approval on his singing ability and visual similarity to Mercury. Baron Cohen will appear in Martin Scorsese's upcoming adventure film Hugo. Cohen's next film, The Dictator, will be a loose adaptation of the novel Zabibah and the King, written by Saddam Hussein. It will tell "the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed". Cohen will play the part of a Saddam Hussein type ruler who gets secretly replaced by a lookalike and then flees to New York. Borat and Bruno film director Larry Charles will direct the film.

Television, radio and magazine appearances

Baron Cohen guest-star in the finale of the fifth season Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Dustin Hoffman as a guide to Heaven. He also provided the voice of the ring-tailed lemur king, King Julien, in DreamWorks' family movie Madagascar (2005) as well as its 2008 sequel, and appeared as Will Ferrell's arch rival the French Formula One speed demon Jean Girard in the 2006 hit Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. He also appeared alongside Johnny Depp in the 2007 film Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street as Signor Adolfo Pirelli.

Baron Cohen tends to avoid doing interviews out of character. However, in 2004, he did the talk show circuit appearing as himself on Late Show with David Letterman, The Opie and Anthony Show, The Howard Stern Show, 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, 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.

Baron Cohen has twice presented the MTV Europe Music Awards, first as Ali G on 8 November 2001, in Frankfurt, Germany, and then as Borat on 3 November 2005 in Lisbon, Portugal. Baron Cohen appeared out of character to accept an award at the British Comedy Awards in December 2006. He said at the time that Borat could not make it to the awards as "he's guest of honour at the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran", referring to the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.

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 might play Freddie Mercury in a biographical film, but his publicist later declared that Baron Cohen would not do so. However, on 16 September 2010, representatives for Cohen confirmed that he would indeed be playing the role in an as-of-yet untitled biopic about Mercury.

Baron Cohen shot a spread with supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio for Marie Claire magazine to promote the film Brüno.

Sports Illustrateds 6 November 2006 issue contains a column called "Skater vs. Instigator", which illustrates various amusing "parallels" between Baron Cohen and figure skater Sasha Cohen, ranging from their mutually held personal significance of the number 4, to their mutual romantic interests in redheads.

Baron Cohen was featured on Australian talk show Rove as Brüno on 28 June 2009.

Baron Cohen was featured in the Time 100 list for 2007.

In 2010, Cohen guest-starred on The Simpsons in the episode "The Greatest Story Ever D'ohed" as Jakob, an angry Israeli tour guide.

Personal life

Marriage and family

Baron Cohen married Australian actress Isla Fisher on 15 March 2010. After three years of study, Fisher converted to Judaism in early 2007, saying "I will definitely have a Jewish wedding just to be with Sacha. I would do anything – move into any religion – to be united in marriage with him. We have a future together, and religion comes second to love as far as we are concerned." She has received the approval of Baron Cohen's observant Jewish parents. Baron Cohen and Fisher have two daughters: Olive, born on 19 October 2007 in Los Angeles, and Elula, born in the summer of 2010.

Legal issues

Two residents of Glod, the Romania village in which the opening scenes of Borat were filmed, hired attorney Edward Fagan to sue the makers of Borat for $30 million. They alleged that the intent of the film was misrepresented to them, that the poorest members of their village were made to look like "savages", and that they were underpaid, particularly when their minute salaries were compared to the millions earned by the completed movie. During several segments, children were filmed with guns and other weapons and in another scene, an amputee who lost his arm was told to wear a rubber fist sex toy. The lawsuit was dismissed in New York hearing on the grounds that the allegations were too vague to stand up in court.

The government of Kazakhstan threatened Baron Cohen with legal action following the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards ceremony in Lisbon, and the authority in charge of the country's country-code top-level domain name removed the website that he had created for his character Borat (previously: for alleged violation of the law—specifically, registering for the domain under a false name. The New York Times, (among others), has reported that Baron Cohen, (in character as Borat), replied: "I'd like to state that I have no connection with Mr Cohen and fully support my government decision to sue this Jew". He was, however, defended by Dariga Nazarbayeva, a politician and the daughter of Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stated, "We should not be afraid of humour and we shouldn't try to control everything, I think." The deputy foreign minister of Kazakhstan later invited Baron Cohen to visit the country, stating that he could learn that "women drive cars, wine is made of grapes, and Jews are free to go to synagogues". After the worldwide success of the Borat film, the Kazakh government, including the president, altered their stance on Baron Cohen's parody, tacitly recognising the invaluable press the controversy created for their country.

Baron Cohen encountered another problem around his Borat character. Two of the three University of South Carolina students who appear in Borat sued the filmmakers, alleging that they were duped into signing release forms while drunk, and that false promises were made that the footage was for a documentary that would never be screened in the US. On 11 December 2006, a Los Angeles judge denied the pair a restraining order to remove them from the film. The lawsuit was dismissed in February 2007.

On 22 May 2009, a charity worker at a seniors bingo game sued Baron Cohen, claiming an incident shot for Brüno at a charity bingo tournament left her disabled. However, the worker later retracted her statement, saying the "actor never struck her", but that he "beat her down emotionally to the point she's now confined to a wheelchair". The scene did not make the final cut for the film.

A lawsuit was filed on 30 April 2010 in the District of Columbia by Palestinian Christian Ayman Abu Aita of Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, West Bank, against Baron Cohen relating to his interview which was used in Brüno. Aita alleges that he has been defamed by false accusations that he is a terrorist. Aita included David Letterman in the suit based on comments made during the 7 July 2009 appearance by Baron Cohen on the Late Show with David Letterman. On 4 November 2010, the DC Case was dismissed with Aita given 120 days to file in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, or have the case permanently dismissed (see ).

Israel and Judaism

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, as well as taking part in the programme Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz for Jewish youth movement leaders.

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 attends synagogue about twice a year.

Baron Cohen frequently speaks in Hebrew while playing the anti-Semitic character Borat. He also sang the lyrics from an old kibbutz song (pretending that it was the Kazakh national anthem) in an episode of Da Ali G Show. In one of the deleted scenes of his movie, after being asked by the host-pastor to lead the table in a pre-meal prayer service, Baron Cohen, in his character role of Borat, sings a lengthy hymn (not Hebrew) that has clear similarities to the Mussaf prayer service of the Jewish High Holidays. He actually repeatedly sings two Polish phrases (slightly mispronounced) "Excuse me ma'am do you speak English?" and "Could you speak slowly please?"