|
John Barry Humphries, AO, CBE (born 17 February 1934 in Camberwell, Melbourne, Victoria) is an Australian comedian, satirist and character actor best known for his on-stage and television alter egos Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife, and Sir Les Patterson, Australia's foul-mouthed cultural attaché to Britain. Humphries is also a film producer and script writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, an award-winning writer and an accomplished landscape painter. Humphries' characters, especially Edna Everage, have brought him international renown, and he has appeared in numerous films, stage productions and television shows. His Barry McKenzie comic strips about Australians in London appeared in Private Eye magazine with drawings by Nicholas Garland. The stories about "Bazza" (also Humphries' nickname) gave wide circulation to Australian slang, particularly jokes about drinking and its consequences, much of it invented by Humphries. He was also the voice of Bruce the Shark in the 2003 Pixar movie Finding Nemo . Humphries has been married four times; his fourth wife Lizzie Spender is the daughter of British poet Sir Stephen Spender. He has two daughters and two sons from his second and third marriages, to Rosalind Tong and Diane Millstead respectively.
|
