Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen, famous stand-up comedian, actor, writer and voice artist, was born in London on 13 October 1971 in a Jewish family. His grandfather is a Holocaus surviver and his maternal grandmother lives in Haifa, Israel. He has two brothers, Erran, who works as a composer and contributed to several films of Baron Cohen, and Amnon. Simon Baron Cohen who is a worldwide autism researcher is his cousin. Sasha Baron Cohen started his education at Hertfordshire in St Columba’s College Prep school and later in private school Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School. In search of his faith and roots he continued his study for one year in Israel at the Rosh Hanikra Kibbutz. Later he studied history at the University of Cambridge writing his thesis on Jewish involvement in the American Civil Rights movement. In the Cambridge University he started to act in different plays and also had performances in Jewish theatre. Cohen is most famous for his fictional unusual characters such as Ali G, Borat, Brüno and Admiral General Aladeen. These characters interact with people in a way that they are being set up for comic situations and make fun of themselves taking the characters as real persons. As soon as people became too familiar with his characters he retired them. He was nominated for different awards. The most important ones are several Emmy nominations, a nomination for an Academy Awards for Writing Adapted Screenplay and a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his work in the film Borat: Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Characters
Ali G
Alistair Leslie Graham nicknamed Ali G was born in a Council Estate. He has four siblings. At the age of fifteen and his mother giving birth to another child he decided to live with his grandmother. Negative point of view of the world and indecorousness are main attributes of this character.
Borat Sadiyev
Borat Sadiyev was born from a nine years old mother in the village of Kuzcek in Kazakhstan on 17 February 1972. His father Boltok is the famous rapist in the town. His older sister Natalya is a Prostitute and according to Borat the number four best one in Kazakhstan and his younger brother Bilo is mentally handicapped. He has three sons, Huey Lewis, Biram and Bilak. Borat is famous for being ethnocentric and pure Kazakh journalist and broadcaster.
Brüno Gehard
Brüno Gehard from Austria is a 19 year old gay fashion show presenter. He can’t help himself from insulting unfashionable people. He speaks English with a strong German accent. Mostly he wears tight pants and special shirts which show his chest without sleeves.
Admiral General Aladeen
His most recent character is Admiral General Aladeen, a powerful dictator of the Republic of Wadiya (North Africa). His guardians consist of only women and never let the oil of Wadiya be sold. He works on nuclear weapons development and he hates western countries.
Performer versus Characters
Sacha Baron Cohen mostly showed up in public with the personality of his characters which sometimes leads to confusion in the media. Two times he has presented the MTV Europe Music Awards, one time in 2001 as Ali G and one time in 2005 as Borat. In this time Hungarian news wire agency MTI reported that the host was “Borat Sagdiyev”. He appeared only one time out of his character in 2006 for the British Comedy Awards, because “Borat was a guest of honour at the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran.”
Personal Quotes
“Borat is based actually on a guy I met in southern Russia. I can’t remember his name. He was a doctor. The Moment I met him I was totally crying. He was a hysterically funny guy, albei totally unintentionally.” (source: http://suite101.com/article/borat-a29203)
“I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, ‘The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.’ I know it’s not very funny being a comedian talking about Holocaust, but I think it’s just an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. The just had to be apathetic.” (source: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2006/11/sacha_baron_coh.html)
“I've been in a bizarre situation, where a country has declared me as its number-one enemy. It's inherently a comic situation. I mean, it's always risky when you don't go down the normal route. I wish I would've been there at the briefing that Bush got about who I am, who Borat is. It would have had to be great.” (source: http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0056187/quotes)
“I think that, essentially, I'm a private person, and to reconcile that with being famous is a hard thing. So I've been trying to have my cake and eat it too - to have my character be famous yet still lead a normal life where I'm not trapped by fame and recognisability.” (source: http://www.movies.ie/interviews/interview_with_sacha_baron_cohen_for_bruno_)
“It's wonderful that the films are successful, but every new person who sees the movie is one less person I can be Borat or Bruno with again, so finishing a movie means having to say goodbye. Admitting that you're never going to play the character again is like saying goodbye to a loved one. And that's hard.” (source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1200145/Sacha-Baron-Cohen-Its-sad-I-kill-Bruno.html)
[on a scene in Hugo) “So I have a bath with the dog. What happens under the bubbles is our business. It seems to me that Marty (Scorsese) makes films for himself. He is an artist. And he's one of the last remaining artists out there, and I think we should respect that.” (source: http://m.imdb.com/name/nm0056187/quotes)
Sources:
http://movies.yahoo.com/person/sacha-baron-cohen/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0056187/
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1559883,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_G