Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen (/ˈsɑːʃə/ SAH-shə; Hebrew: סָשָׁה נֹעַם בָּרוֹן כֹּהֵן; born 13 October 1971) is an English comedian, actor, writer and producer. He is best known for his creation and portrayal of the fictional satirical characters Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gehard, and Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen. At the 2012 British Comedy Awards, Baron Cohen received the Outstanding Achievement Award and accepted the award in-character as Ali G. In 2013, he received the BAFTA Charlie Chaplin Britannia Award for Excellence in Comedy. In 2018, The Times named him among the 30 best living comedians.
This article is about the British actor and comedian. For the American figure skater, see Sasha Cohen.
Sacha Baron Cohen
- Comedian
- actor
- writer
- producer
1995–present
3
- Erran Baron Cohen (brother)
- Ash Baron-Cohen (cousin)
- Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin)
- Dan Baron Cohen (cousin)
Beginning his career in television, Baron Cohen was named Best Newcomer at the 1999 British Comedy Awards for The 11 O'Clock Show. He created and starred as his character Ali G in Da Ali G Show (2000–2004), receiving two BAFTA Awards. His next television project, Who Is America? (2018) for Showtime, saw him nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy. In 2019, he portrayed Eli Cohen in the limited series The Spy for OCS and Netflix, for which he received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film.
Baron Cohen has produced and/or performed in comedic films, such as Ali G Indahouse (2002), Borat (2006) and its sequel Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Brüno (2009), and The Dictator (2012). He has also appeared in dramatic films including Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Hugo (2011), Les Misérables (2012), and The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020). In 2016, he starred in Grimsby and co-starred in Alice Through the Looking Glass. His voice acting roles include King Julien XIII in the Madagascar film series (2005–2012) and Uncle Ugo in Luca (2021).
Baron Cohen has two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, three Golden Globe Award nominations, resulting in two wins for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his work in the feature film Borat and its sequel. In 2021, he received Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations for his performance as Abbot "Abbie" Hoffman in The Trial of the Chicago 7. He has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the Actors Branch since 2008.[1]
Early life[edit]
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen[2] was born into a Jewish family[3] in the Hammersmith area of London on 13 October 1971.[4] His mother, photographer Daniella (née Weiser), was born in British Mandatory Palestine in 1939.[5][6] His father, editor-turned-clothing store owner Gerald "Jerry" Baron Cohen (1932–2016), was born into a Belarusian Ashkenazi Jewish family in London and grew up in the Welsh town of Pontypridd.[7][8][9][10][11] Baron Cohen's paternal grandfather, Morris Moses Cohen, added "Baron" to his surname.[10][12] His maternal grandmother, Liesel (née Levi), lived in Haifa and trained as a ballet dancer in Germany before fleeing the Nazis in 1936.[9][13][14][15] He has two older brothers: Erran, a composer with whom he often collaborates, and Amnon.[16] His cousins include autism researcher Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, playwright Dan Baron Cohen, and filmmaker Ash Baron-Cohen.[17]
Baron Cohen was first educated at the independent Catholic St Columba's College in St Albans, before moving on to attend the independent Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree.[18] He then studied history with a focus on antisemitism at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1993 with upper-second-class honours.[19][20][11] As an undergraduate, he wrote his thesis on the role of Jewish activists in the American civil rights movement.[21] He was a member of the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, where he performed in shows such as Fiddler on the Roof and Cyrano de Bergerac, as well as acted in shows with the Labour youth movement Habonim Dror.[22] He played the cello while growing up, and made his television debut as a cellist on Fanfare for Young Musicians.[11]
Career[edit]
Early roles[edit]
Baron Cohen grew up as a fan of Monty Python and Peter Cook, but his greatest comedic influence was Peter Sellers, whom he saw as "this incredibly realistic actor, who was also hilarious and who managed to bridge the gap between comedy and satire".[23][24] Known for portraying a wide range of comic characters using different accents and guises, Sellers was referred to by Baron Cohen as "the most seminal force in shaping [his] early ideas on comedy".[25] After leaving university, Baron Cohen worked for a time as a fashion model.[22] 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, which caught the attention of a producer. Baron Cohen hosted Pump TV from 1995 to 1996.
In 1996, Baron Cohen began presenting the youth chat programme F2F for Granada Talk TV and had a small role in an advertisement for McCain Microchips, as a chef in a commercial entitled "Ping Pong".[26] He took clown training in Paris, at the École Philippe Gaulier, studying under master-clown Philippe Gaulier. Of his former pupil, Gaulier says: "He was a good clown, full of spirit"[27] while Baron Cohen remarks of Gaulier, "Without him, I really do doubt whether I would have had any success in my field".[28] Baron Cohen made his first feature film appearance in the British comedy The Jolly Boys' Last Stand (2000). Also in 2000, he played the part of Super Greg for a series of TV advertisements for Lee Jeans; the advertisements never aired, but the website for Super Greg created an internet sensation.[29]
In the media[edit]
Public persona and activism[edit]
For much of the early part of his career, Baron Cohen avoided 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,[83] and others to promote the forthcoming season of his show on HBO. He was also interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered[84] and did an interview with Rolling Stone, published in November 2006, that the magazine labelled as "his only interview as himself".[14] He also appeared in an interview out of character with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air on 4 January 2007.[85]
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.[86] His other reason, Newsweek claims, is that Baron Cohen is fiercely private: "...according to the UK press, his publicists denied that he attended a party for the London premiere of Borat and that a party even occurred".[86]
Baron Cohen was featured in the Time 100 list for 2007.[87]
Sports Illustrated's 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[88] to their shared romantic interests in redheads.
On 28 December 2015, Baron Cohen and his wife, Australian actress Isla Fisher, donated £335,000 ($500,000) to Save the Children as part of a programme to vaccinate children in northern Syria against measles; they donated the same amount to the International Rescue Committee, also aimed at helping Syrian refugees.[89]
In 2019, Baron Cohen was awarded the Anti-Defamation League's International Leadership Award for opposing bigotry and prejudice. In accepting the award, Baron Cohen gave an impassioned speech directing criticism at internet companies, singling out Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter as part of "the biggest propaganda machine in history" and claiming that their rules on hate speech meant "they would have let Hitler buy ads".[90][91]
In June 2020, Baron Cohen crashed the right-wing "March for Our Rights 3" protest in Olympia, Washington, a counter-protest to the March for Our Lives demonstration as a result of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Disguised under heavy make-up, Baron Cohen sang a song telling listeners to attack liberals, CNN, the World Health Organization, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and "mask-wearers". The crowd, which initially sang along, realized they were being pranked when counter-protestors recognized Baron Cohen and began laughing. Baron Cohen's security stopped the organizers from taking him off stage and turning off the power, and Baron Cohen was forced to flee in a private ambulance from the crowd.[92][93] The incident was later revealed to have been organized as part of filming for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, with Baron Cohen in-character as Borat in disguise.[94]
In October 2023, Baron Cohen was among the members of the Writers Guild of America that called out its guild leaders for not speaking in support of Israel at the height of Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza. [95]
In November 2023, Baron Cohen was among more than a dozen TikTok creators and celebrities who confronted TikTok executives, alleging TikTok is "creating the biggest antisemitic movement since the Nazis" and that the service could "flip a switch" to silence such videos.[96] In response, the company reportedly pushed back and stated that while the platform regularly moderates antisemitic, anti-Arab racist, and Islamophobic content, it does not moderate nor amplify the spread of content that expresses criticism of what users describe as Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid or the ethnic cleansing and claims of genocide of Palestinians that is growing during the 2023-2024 Israel–Hamas war.[97][98][99]
Controversies, criticism and lawsuits[edit]
Baron Cohen has been criticized for the racist or prejudiced comments his characters have made. HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer replied to the criticism and said, "Through his alter-egos, [Baron Cohen] delivers an obvious satire that exposes people's ignorance and prejudice in much the same way All in the Family did years ago."[100] 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.[101] He said, "Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice."[14] Addressing the same topic in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, he said, "People really let down their guard with [Borat] 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."[84] The grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Baron Cohen said he also wishes in particular to expose the role of indifference in the Holocaust: "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."[14] Regarding the enthusiastic response to his song "In My Country There Is Problem" (also known as "Throw the Jew Down the Well"), he said, "Did it reveal that [the cheering audience] were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism."[14]
In an interview with former Tory MP politician 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.[102]
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: http://www.borat.kz) 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".[103] 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..."[104] 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".[105] After the success of the Borat film, the Kazakh government, including the president, altered their stance on Baron Cohen's parody, tacitly recognising the invaluable press coverage the controversy created for their country.[106]
At the 2006 MTV Movie Awards, Borat introduced Gnarls Barkley's performance of "Crazy",[107] 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.[108]
At the 2006 UK premiere of Borat, he arrived in Leicester Square in a cart pulled by a mule and a number of "Kazakh women," announcing: "Good evening, gentleman and prostitutes. After this, I stay in a hotel in Kings Cross. We will all drink, wrestle with no clothes on and shoot dogs from the window".[109]
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.[110][111]
On 26 September 2008, Baron Cohen walked onto the runway during the Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada fashion show in Milan. In-character as Brüno, he was wearing a costume made 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 had allegedly accessed the fashion show using fake IDs.[112]
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.[113] 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".[114] The scene did not make the final cut for the film. The case was dismissed in late November 2009 on Anti-SLAPP grounds, with all lawyer's fees to be paid by the charity worker. The dismissal was appealed and upheld on 12 September 2011.[115][116]
On 30 April 2010, Palestinian Christian grocer Ayman Abu Aita, of the West Bank and former member of Fatah, filed a lawsuit against Baron Cohen, alleging that he had been defamed by false accusations that he was a terrorist in the movie Bruno. Aita included David Letterman in the suit based on comments made during a 7 July 2009 appearance by Baron Cohen on the Late Show with David Letterman.[117] Unlike the other lawsuits, Aita did not sign a release form, and his case centred around whether Baron Cohen's portrayal of Aita was false, not whether he was defrauded.[118] In September 2012, the defamation claim was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount, and the court case was dismissed.[119][120][121]
In 2018, former Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama sued Baron Cohen for $95 million relating to a mock interview in Who is America? and allegations of paedophilia.[122][123] On 13 July 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the lawsuit after finding that Moore had signed a consent agreement barring his claims.[124] Moore has filed notice of his intent to appeal the decision.[125] On 8 July 2022, Baron Cohen defeated the lawsuit.[126]
Personal life[edit]
Baron Cohen first met Australian actress Isla Fisher at a party in Sydney in 2001 and they became engaged in 2004.[127] Subsequent to Fisher's conversion to Judaism,[128] the pair married on 15 March 2010 in a Jewish ceremony in Paris.[129][130][131] They have two daughters, born 2007[132] and 2010,[133] and a son, born 2015.[134][135] They previously divided their time between the Marylebone district of London and the Laurel Canyon neighbourhood of Los Angeles,[136][137] before settling in Sydney.[138][139] On April 5, 2024, Fisher and Baron Cohen announced via Instagram that they had filed for divorce in 2023.[140]
Discussing his Jewish identity, Baron Cohen has stated, "I wouldn't say I am a religious Jew. I am proud of my Jewish identity and there are certain things I do and customs I keep."[13] He tries to keep kosher,[13] attends synagogue about twice a year,[13] and is fluent in Hebrew.[141][142] He first acted in theatrical productions with the Labour youth movement Habonim Dror.[143][144] He spent a year in Israel as a kibbutz volunteer at Rosh HaNikra and Beit HaEmek as part of the Shnat Habonim Dror, also taking part in the programme Machon L'Madrichei Chutz La'Aretz for Jewish youth movement leaders. In 2023, he was one of the actors to sign the open letter praising President Biden for his pro-Israel stance. The letter has been seen as pro-Zionist.[145][146][147]