Actors - Barry Humphries

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	Actors - Barry Humphries

John Barry Humphries AO (b. 17 February 1934) 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.

Barry Humphries was born in Melbourne. After education at Melbourne Grammar School and the University of Melbourne he joined the Melbourne Theatre Group, and created the character of Edna Everage in 1956. In the early sixties he moved to London and appeared in several West End productions. He first brought Mrs. Everage to the British stage in 1969 for his one-man show Just a Show.

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 sons and two daughters from his third and fourth marriages, to Diane Millstead and Lizzie Spender respectively.

Early life

Barry Humphries was born in Kew, Melbourne. His father was a well-to-do construction manager and Barry grew up in a "clean, tasteful and modern home" in Camberwell, then one of Melbourne’s new ‘garden suburbs’. His early home life set the pattern for his eventual stage career -- Barry's parents bought him everything he wanted, but his father in particular spent little time with him, so he spent hours playing dress-ups in the back garden.

:"Disguising myself as different characters and I had a whole box of dressing up clothes ... Red Indian, sailor suit, Chinese costume and I was very spoiled in that way ... I also found that entertaining people gave me a great feeling of release, making people laugh was a very good way of befriending them. People couldn't hit you could they if they were laughing."

His parents nicknamed him 'Sunny Sam', and his early childhood was happy and uneventful, but in his teens Barry began to rebel against the strictures of conventional suburban life by becoming 'artistic' – much to the dismay of his parents who, despite their affluence, distrusted "art". A key event took place when he was nine -- his mother gave all his books to the Salvation Army, cheerfully explaining: "But you've read them, Barry."

Humphries responded by becoming a voracious reader, a collector of rare books, a painter, a theatre fan and a surrealist. Dressing up in a black cloak, black homburg and mascara'd eyes, he invented his first sustained character, "Dr Aaron Azimuth", dandy and Dadaist.

Educated at Camberwell Grammar School, he has been awarded his place in the Gallery of Achievement there. His father’s building business prospered, and Barry was sent to Melbourne Grammar School, where he spurned sport, detested mathematics, shirked cadets "on the basis of conscientious objection" and matriculated with brilliant results in English and Art.

He spent two years at Melbourne University, where he studied law, philosophy and fine arts. During this time he became Australia’s leading exponent of the deconstructive and absurd art movement, Dada. The Dadaist pranks and performances he mounted in Melbourne were experiments in anarchy and visual satire which have become part of Australian folklore. One famous exhibit entitled "Pus In Boots" consisted of a pair of Wellington boots filled with custard.

He was also legendary for his provocative public pranks. One infamous example involved Humphries dressing as a Frenchman, with an accomplice dressed as a blind person; the accomplice would board a tram, followed soon after by Humphries. At the appropriate juncture, Humphries would force his way past the "blind" man, yelling "Get out of my way, you disgusting blind person", kicking him viciously in the shins and then jumping off the tram and making his escape in a waiting car.

An even more extreme example was his notorious "sick bag" prank. This involved carrying a tin of condensed soup onto an aircraft, which he would then surreptitiously empty into an air-sickness bag. At the appropriate point in the flight, he would pretend to vomit loudly and violently into the bag. Then, to the horror of passengers and crew, he would proceed to eat the contents. One April Fool's Day, Humphries placed a roast dinner and glass of champagne in an inner-city bin. Later in the morning, when there were many businesspeople queuing at a nearby building, Humphries approached the group as a dirty, dishevelled man. He walked to the bin, opened the lid and proceeded to lift the roast and drink from it. Much to the amazement of watchers-by, he found a suitable seating area and began to eat it.

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Actors - Barry Humphries

Early life

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