Eddie Izzard
British
Suzy Eddie Izzard
- Comedian
- actor
- activist
1982–present
Izzard's stand-up comedy tours have included Live at the Ambassadors (1993), Definite Article (1996), Glorious (1997), Dress to Kill (1998), Circle (2000), Stripped (2009), Force Majeure (2013) and Wunderbar (2022). She starred in the television series The Riches (2007–2008), and has appeared in numerous films, including Ocean's Twelve (2004), Ocean's Thirteen (2007), Valkyrie (2008), Absolutely Anything (2015) and Six Minutes to Midnight (2020). Izzard has also worked as a voice actor on films such as Five Children and It (2004), The Wild (2006), The Lego Batman Movie (2017) and the Netflix original series Green Eggs and Ham (2019). Among various accolades, she won two Primetime Emmys for Dress to Kill and was nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway performance in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.
In 2009, Izzard completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief, despite having no history of long-distance running. In 2016, she ran 27 marathons in 27 days in South Africa in honour of Nelson Mandela, raising £1.35 million. In addition to her native English, she regularly performs stand-up in Arabic, French, German, Russian, and Spanish, and is an active supporter of Europeanism and the European Union.
A dedicated Labour Party activist, Izzard twice ran unsuccessfully for the party's National Executive Committee and then joined as the most successful initially non-elected person after Christine Shawcroft resigned in March 2018. In 2022, Izzard attempted to become the party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Central but was not selected in the members' ballot. In 2023, Izzard attempted to become the party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion but was not selected in the members' ballot.
Early life and education
Edward John Izzard[5] was born in Aden (then in Aden Colony and now in Yemen)[6] on 7 February 1962,[7] to English parents Dorothy Ella Izzard (1927–1968) and Harold John Michael Izzard (1928–2018). Their surname is of French Huguenot origin.[8] Dorothy was a midwife and nurse, while Harold was an accountant who was working in Aden for British Petroleum at the time of Edward's birth.[9][10] A brother, Mark, was born two years earlier.[10]
When Izzard was a year old, the family moved to Northern Ireland and settled in Bangor, where they lived until Izzard was five.[6][9][11][12] The family then moved to Wales, where they lived in Skewen.[10]
Izzard was six when her mother died of cancer.[10][11][13] The siblings built a model railway to occupy their time while their mother was ill, which was later donated to Bexhill Museum in 2016.[14] Following the death, Izzard attended the private St John's School in Newton,[15] St Bede's Prep School in Eastbourne,[16] and Eastbourne College.[10][11][17] She has said that she knew she was transgender at the age of four, after watching a boy being forced to wear a dress by his sisters,[18] and knew she wanted to be an actor at the age of seven.[19]
She studied drama at the University of Sheffield.[20]
Charity work
On 27 July 2009, with only five weeks' training and no significant prior running experience, Izzard began seven weeks of back-to-back marathon runs (with Sundays off) across the UK to raise money for Sport Relief.[50] She ran from London to Cardiff to Belfast to Edinburgh and back to London, carrying the flag of the country—England, Scotland, or Wales—in which she was running. In Northern Ireland, she carried a self-designed green flag bearing a white dove. The blog Eddie Iz Running documented the 43 marathons in 51 days, covering at least 27 miles per day (totalling more than 1,100 miles), ending on 15 September 2009.[51] Izzard received a special award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2009 for these achievements.[52] In March 2010, she took part in the Sport Relief Mile event.[53]
On 16 February 2016, the BBC announced that Izzard would attempt to run 27 marathons in 27 days through South Africa for Sport Relief.[54] The significance of the number 27 came from the number of years Nelson Mandela was held in prison. In total, she would aim to run more than 700 miles in temperatures of up to 40 °C. Izzard had attempted such a project in South Africa in 2012, but withdrew due to health concerns.[55] She completed the first marathon on 23 February 2016, completing the marathon challenge on 20 March 2016 at the statue of Mandela in front of the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Because she had spent a day in hospital, she had to run two consecutive marathons on this last day. She raised more than £1.35M for Sport Relief.[56] A BBC documentary detailing the feat was broadcast on 28 March.[57]
On 8 December 2020, Izzard announced[58] that she would attempt to run 31 marathons, and perform 31 stand-up gigs, in the 31 days of January 2021 to raise money for a range of charities including Fareshare, Walking With The Wounded, Care International, United to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases, and Covenant House.[59] The series of marathons raised in excess of £275,000.[60]
Comedic style
Izzard uses a stream-of-consciousness delivery that jumps between topics, saying in a 2004 interview with The Guardian that "it's the oral tradition [...] human beings have been doing it for thousands of years".[86] Her bent towards the surreal went so far as to produce a sitcom called Cows in 1997 for Channel 4, a live-action comedy with actors dressed in cow suits.[87] She has cited Monty Python as her biggest influence, and Python member John Cleese once referred to her as "the lost Python".[12]
Personal life
Izzard identifies as genderfluid[88][89] and calls herself "somewhat boy-ish and somewhat girl-ish".[18] She uses the word "transgender" as an umbrella term.[90] When asked in 2019 what pronouns she preferred, Izzard responded, "either 'he' or 'she'" and explained, "If I am in boy mode, then 'he', or girl mode, 'she'".[91] In 2020, she requested she/her pronouns for an appearance on the TV show Portrait Artist of the Year and said she wants "to be based in girl mode from now on".[92] In March 2023, she announced that she would begin using the name Suzy in addition to Eddie, saying that she is "going to be Suzy Eddie Izzard".[2][1] Explaining that she had wanted to use the name Suzy since she was 10 years old, she added that people "can choose" which name they want to use to refer to her,[1][2] and that she would keep using Eddie Izzard as her public name since it is more widely recognised.[93]
In the past, Izzard identified as a transvestite, and has also called herself "a lesbian trapped in a man's body"[94] and "a complete boy plus half girl".[95] According to her memoir Believe Me, she first cross-dressed in public at the age of 23 with the help of a lesbian friend, an experience which ended in a verbal confrontation with three 13-year-old girls who had followed Izzard home from a public toilet.[96]
She started to publicly identify as transvestite in venues such as the Edinburgh Festival as early as 1992.[97][98] She states that the way she dresses is neither part of her performance, nor a sexual fetish: "I don't call it drag; I don't even call it cross-dressing. It's just wearing a dress. It's not about artifice. It's about me just expressing myself."[99] She remarks in Unrepeatable, "Women wear what they want and so do I." She has expressed a personal conviction that being transgender is caused by genetics and that, someday, this will be scientifically proven. In preparation for that day, she has had her own genome sequenced.[100]
Izzard keeps her romantic life private, citing the wishes of her companions not wanting to become content for her show.[101] She once dated Irish singer Sarah Townsend, whom Izzard first met while running a venue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1989.[102] Townsend later created the documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story.[23]
Izzard is an atheist. During the 2008 Stripped tour, she said, "I was warming the material up in New York, where one night, literally on stage, I realised I didn't believe in God at all. I just didn't think there was anyone upstairs."[101] She has since described herself as a spiritual atheist, saying, "I don't believe in the guy upstairs, I believe in us."[103]
Izzard supports Crystal Palace, and became an associate director at the club on 16 July 2012.[104] She is also a train modeller.[105]
Honours
In 2003, Izzard received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, for her work promoting "modern languages and tolerance of other cultures and lifestyles", and for having "transcended national barriers" with humour.[66][106] She has also received honorary doctorates from the University of Sunderland in 2012,[107] York St John University in 2018,[108] and the University of Sheffield in 2006,[109] where she had spent a year on an Accounting and Financial Management course in the early 1980s and established the now-defunct Alternative Productions Society in the Union of Students with the aim of promoting fringe-based arts. She was elected Honorary President of Sheffield's Students' Union in 2010.[110]
Izzard's website won the Yahoo People's Choice Award in 2004 and a Webby Award in 2005.[111][112]
In 2007, Izzard was listed as number 3 of the 100 Greatest British National Comedians (behind Peter Kay at number 2 and Billy Connolly at number 1) as part of British television station Channel 4's ongoing 100 Greatest ... series, and was ranked 5th in 2010.[113]
In 2013, Izzard received the 6th Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism,[114][115] which is presented at Harvard University each year by the Humanist Community at Harvard,[116] the American Humanist Association, and the Harvard Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics.
In 2015, Izzard was chosen by readers of The Guardian as their 2014 public language champion. The award was announced at the Guardian and British Academy 2014 Schools Language Awards as part of the annual Language Festival.[117]
