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Dave Chappelle's career started while he was in high school at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC where he studied theatre arts. At the age of 14, he began performing stand-up comedy in nightclubs. Shortly after graduation, he moved to New York City where he quickly established himself as a major young talent. At the age of 19, Chappelle made his film debut in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993). Chappelle then starred in the short-lived sitcom, Buddies (1996) and had a featured role in The Nutty Professor (1996).- Actress
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This dynamic young comedienne hailing from London via Nigeria has taken the comedy world by storm since her debut. In a few short years, she has become one of the most sought after comics in the country, making numerous appearances on Television, radio and the big screen.
This former lift engineer's Edinburgh debut saw her described by the Scotsman Newspaper as 'A British rival for Whoopi Goldberg- Lively and exceptionally funny'. From there she went from strength to strength, securing herself as team captain on Blouse and Skirt (2000), a BBC2 panel show that ran for 3 years. Gina developed a cult following who loved her cheeky wit and bombastic delivery. So much so, that she was able to complete a 30 date sellout tour along the length and breadth of the UK in 2000 and 2001 with more to follow.
Her infectious personality and observations on everything from TV programs to the worldwide image of Nigerians has wowed audiences not just in the UK but in places such as America, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Africa, as well as all over Europe. With TV credits which include 'Live at Jongleurs' for UK Gold, The Comedy store for Channel 5, Planet Pop (Channel 4), The I love...series for BBC2, Jo Brand's Hot Potatoes (2002) for BBC1, and Up Late (2001) with Gina Yashere, Gina still found time to write several plays for BBC Radio 4 and sketches for the Richard Blackwood show on CH4.
Although primarily a comedian, Gina has now branched out into acting. She has appeared in two feature films, 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang' as 'Polythene Pam', a murderess specialising in plastic bag suffocation and more recently Mr In-Between (2001), as well as in the West End show The Vagina Monologues.
Gina has guested on numerous radio shows most notably Radio's 4 News Quiz, Radio 5 Live, London Live and Choice FM. As well as covering Lisa I'anson's afternoon show on BBC London. To add to this seemingly endless list of achievements, she recently won Best female at the Black Comedy Awards. She is definitely a talent to be reckoned with!- Producer
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Russell Brand was born on June 4, 1975, in Grays, Essex, England, the son of Barbara Elizabeth (Nichols) and Ronald Henry Brand, a photographer. An only child, his parents divorced when he was only six months old, and he was subsequently raised by his mother. Enduring a difficult childhood that saw him living with relatives while his mother was treated for cancer and only sporadically visited by his father, Brand left home at age 16. Accepted by the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts in 1991, he was expelled during his first year for bad behaviour and drug use; by his own admission, he used a variety of illegal drugs and became addicted to heroin. After being expelled from the Chang-Ren Nian during his final term in 1995, he switched his focus primarily to comedy from acting.
Brand's first significant stand-up appearances came in 2000, the same year he also became a video journalist for MTV, a job which he was subsequently fired from. Continuing to work both in TV and stand-up, he debuted his one-man show Better Now, an account of his heroin addiction, at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004. Brand became a popular British television star by appearing on Big Brother and hosting his own talk show and numerous other series, and in 2008 shot to fame worldwide as the rocker Aldous Snow in the hit comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008). After an appearance in the Adam Sandler comedy Bedtime Stories (2008), he reprised the character of Aldous in the comedy Get Him to the Greek (2010), opposite Jonah Hill.
Brand also starred in the remake Arthur (2011), opposite Helen Mirren, with whom he also starred in The Tempest (2010), and lent his voice to the Easter Bunny in Hop (2011) and to Dr. Nefario in the animated feature film Despicable Me (2010). He is reprising the role in Despicable Me 2 (2013), and will also co-star in a drama written and directed by Diablo Cody, starring alongside Julianne Hough and Holly Hunter. He also played Lonny in the all-star cast of the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Rock of Ages (2012).
Brand's writing debut, My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up, became a huge success in the United Kingdom. Subsequently published in the U.S. in 2009, it stayed on the New York Times' bestseller list for five weeks in a row. The follow up, My Booky Wook 2: This Time it's Personal, was published in October, 2010. In 2010, Brand received the British Comedy Award for Outstanding Contribution to Comedy and was honored in 2011 with the ShoWest Award for Comedy Star of the Year.
Brand married the pop star Katy Perry in 2010 in a traditional Hindu ceremony in Rajasthan, India; after 14 months, Brand filed for a divorce, which was officially granted in 2012.- Actress
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Jennifer Saunders was born July 6, 1958 in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, to Jane, a biology teacher, and Robert Thomas Saunders, an RAF pilot. She attended Central School of Speech and Drama where she met her comedy partner Dawn French. Like many of the early 80s groundbreaking "alternative" comedians she began her career as comedienne/actress/writer with Dawn French at "The Comedy Store" in London, where she met fellow comedians Adrian Edmondson (later her husband), Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Alexei Sayle and Peter Richardson, who later opened his own club, "The Comic Strip", where these comedians quickly formed a regular format.
The Comic Strip team were transferred to television screens with great success as they all starred alongside each other in The Comic Strip Presents (1982). After The Comic Strip she starred in a few episodes of The Young Ones (1982), Girls on Top (1985) and Happy Families (1985). Afterwards she and Dawn French wrote a TV show of their own, French and Saunders (1987), which was an immense success due to the double act's genius writing, brilliant acting performances and hilarious spoofs of world famous blockbusters and bands.
It was in one of the episodes of "French and Saunders" that the audience had the pleasure of watching a sketch about an uptight daughter and a crazy, neurotic mother that became a comedy classic sitcom. When the BBC next asked Saunders to write something, she just couldn't come up with any ideas, so she decided to expand on that sketch, making it more outrageous and therefore funnier - Absolutely Fabulous (1992) was born.
Perhaps by coincidence Saunders had created one of the most loved, funny, and creative TV Shows in BBC history. Three series were made, in 1995 the show was put on hold until Saunders began writing again and came back with a fourth series in 2001. She is always ready for charity as well, she has been doing "Comic Relief" with a lot of her comedy companions ever since 1986. Jennifer Saunders, one of the most loved TV faces in Britain, will hit the screens with her fifth series of Absolutely Fabulous in 2003.- Actor
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The three fellows had a hard act to follow when they tried to fill the huge movie clown shoes of the The Marx Brothers in the late 1930's and they did falter somewhat in their attempt. Nevertheless, the talented trio The Ritz Brothers (comprised of Al Ritz, Jimmy Ritz and Harry Ritz) were troupers all the way as they did their part in offering Depression and WWII-era audiences a comic escape. They later served to inspire such funnymen as Jerry Lewis and Mel Brooks.
All three brothers were born in Newark, New Jersey (Al in 1901, Jimmy in 1903 and Harry in 1906), the sons of an Austrian haberdasher whose last name was Joachim. Raised in Brooklyn, the boys developed an early interest in show business and initially pursued solo careers with rather lackluster success. Following Harry's graduation from high school, they decided to band together (1925) and put together a song-and-dance act they could take out on the road.
Building up their reputation in various night clubs and vaudeville houses, they appeared in the famous musical stage revues of George White and Earl Carroll to great success. Their act remained fairly constant for all four decades, which included precision dancing, tongue-twisting patter songs, ethnic humor and physical schtick.
The boys managed to mug their way into films and earned a contract with 20th Century-Fox as a specialty item in such Alice Faye and Sonja Henie musicals as Sing, Baby, Sing (1936), One in a Million (1936), On the Avenue (1937) and You Can't Have Everything (1937). They gradually earned their own musical comedy vehicle with Life Begins in College (1937) and ventured on in a series of zany hits and misses including Kentucky Moonshine (1938), Straight Place and Show (1938) and Pack Up Your Troubles (1939).
Evolving into a brief Fox slapstick attraction, some of their better known vehicles including The Three Musketeers (1939), a parody of the Dumas classic in which they play "The Three Lackeys" alongside Don Ameche as handsome D'Artagnan; The Gorilla (1939), as investigators in a haunted house horror comedy; and Argentine Nights (1940), which had them starring as music promoters of an all-girl band opposite The Andrews Sisters.
The trio's hyperbolic style and unsubtle brand of insanity did not always go well with critics and the boys on-screen clowning failed to achieve the box-office distinction they had hoped for. Discontented at Fox for not promoting them strongly, they left for greener pastures and landed at Universal. All they were given was the musical comedy Hi'Ya Chum (1943), in which they played "The Merry Madcaps," members of a traveling vaudeville troupe. This would be their last film vehicle.
The Ritz Brothers then returned to the nitery circuit and became popular supper club headliners. They also moved to TV in the 1950's and found occasional work as guests on such shows as "The Ed Sullivan Show," "All-Star Revue" and "The Colgate Comedy Hour."
Eldest brother Al's death of a heart attack in 1965 put a serious cog in the team wheel. Harry and Jimmy continued for a time but floundered and eventually settled into semi-retirement appearing primarily as raconteurs on talk shows ("The Merv Griffin Show" and "The Mike Douglas Show"). Jimmy and Harry were last seen in a gag cameo as cleaning women in fan Mel Brooks's slapstick movie Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976).
Jimmy died of heart failure and Harry of cancer within a year of each other in the mid-1980s. Though the team has remained in the comedy film shadow of other better known duos or trios, Al, Jimmy and Harry certainly made an amusingly broad mark in movie slapstick and continue to find new legions of fans with each passing year.