Eddie Izzard Biography Quotes 10 Report mistakes

Early life and family
Eddie Izzard, born Edward John Izzard on 7 February 1962, is a British performer whose life and work span stand-up comedy, acting, writing, and political and charitable activism. She was born in Aden, then part of the British-controlled Colony of Aden (now Yemen), into a family that moved frequently with her father's work. Her mother, Dorothy Izzard, a nurse and midwife, died when Eddie was very young, a loss that deeply marked her childhood. Her father, Harold John Michael Izzard, an accountant, raised Eddie and her older brother, Mark, with a mixture of steadiness and encouragement for curiosity. The siblings' bond remained a through-line in her life; Mark Izzard later became one of her closest creative collaborators.

Education and early performing
After spending parts of her childhood in Northern Ireland and Wales, Eddie grew up largely in England. At the University of Sheffield she studied accountancy but found herself drawn irresistibly to performance, improvisation, and the mechanics of making audiences laugh. She left university to pursue comedy full-time, honing her skills as a street performer and on small stages. Busking in places like London's Covent Garden and working rooms at the Comedy Store, she learned to knit together broad physicality with quicksilver tangents, riffing on history, religion, and everyday logic. Encouragement from fellow comics on the alternative circuit, as well as feedback from her brother Mark, helped crystallize a voice both intellectual and warm, confident enough to let an idea meander until it revealed something sharper and funnier than a prepared punch line.

Breakthrough in stand-up
By the early 1990s, Eddie's live shows began to draw larger audiences, and a set of landmark recordings carried her reputation internationally. Live at the Ambassadors, Unrepeatable, Definite Article, and Glorious showcased her capacity to treat stand-up as imaginative theater, working with staging, callbacks, and sudden dives into European history. Dress to Kill proved especially consequential, bringing her to a wide U.S. audience and earning major awards, including Emmys for performance and writing. Later tours expanded her ambitions. She performed extended runs in France and Germany, developing the craft to deliver comedy in multiple languages and returning to countries to refine material in French and German. Force Majeure, a globe-spanning tour, underlined her intention to be, as she put it, a kind of global comedian, moving ideas across borders rather than tailoring them to a single culture or channel.

Acting on screen and stage
Parallel to stand-up, Eddie pursued substantial acting work. In film, she appeared in Velvet Goldmine, Mystery Men, Shadow of the Vampire, Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, Valkyrie, and Victoria & Abdul, demonstrating range from sly comic presence to period drama. She co-wrote and starred in Six Minutes to Midnight, collaborating closely with Celyn Jones and director Andy Goddard, and shared the screen with figures such as Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent, whose veteran gravitas provided a rich counterpoint to her tense, restrained performance.

Television offered another platform. In The Riches she starred opposite Minnie Driver, playing a grifter reinventing family life in suburban America; the series brought awards recognition and deepened her reputation as a dramatic lead. Later, in Hannibal, she appeared alongside Mads Mikkelsen and Hugh Dancy, contributing a chilling portrayal that contrasted starkly with the warmth of her stage persona.

On stage, Eddie's theatrical instincts found full expression. A Day in the Death of Joe Egg brought her to Broadway and earned a Tony Award nomination, affirming that her gift for timing could carry demanding text as well as improvisation. In the 2020s she undertook solo theatrical adaptations, including a one-person Great Expectations and a solo Hamlet. These productions drew on close collaboration with her brother Mark Izzard, who adapted text, and director Selina Cadell, whose guidance balanced the technical rigors of classic drama with Eddie's intuitive rapport with audiences.

Identity, visibility, and public life
Eddie spoke publicly about being transgender decades before mainstream entertainment made space for such conversations. In the early 1990s she framed herself with candor and humor, and over time she described her identity with greater clarity, using she/her pronouns from 2020 onward. In 2023 she shared that she had adopted the name Suzy Eddie Izzard, while continuing to use Eddie professionally. This openness became a touchstone for fans who recognized how her self-knowledge and artistic risk-taking informed one another. A long creative association with filmmaker Sarah Townsend, who directed the documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story, helped shape the narrative of persistence beneath the jokes: countless small stages, quiet setbacks, and the refusal to narrow her ambitions to fit expectations.

Political and charitable activism
Eddie's sense of public responsibility has been as prominent as her stagecraft. A committed Labour Party supporter, she campaigned across the United Kingdom for progressive causes and candidates, advocated for the UK to remain in the European Union, and briefly served on Labour's National Executive Committee in 2018. She later sought to stand for Parliament, including a bid for selection in Sheffield Central in 2022, bringing her public profile and organizing energy into formal politics.

Her charitable work has been unusually physical. In 2009 she ran more than forty marathons in a matter of weeks around the UK to raise funds for good causes. In 2016 she completed 27 marathons in 27 days across South Africa in tribute to Nelson Mandela and to draw attention to organizations working on fairness and opportunity. Subsequent multi-day challenges, including running day after day on treadmills and streets to raise money during and after the pandemic years, continued that model of endurance-as-solidarity. These efforts involved teams of coaches, medics, and organizers, as well as family encouragement; her father Harold's pride and her brother Mark's steadying presence were often noted when she crossed marathon finish lines exhausted but elated.

Honors and legacy
Eddie has received major awards for comedy, including Emmys for Dress to Kill, and a Tony nomination for her stage work. Universities have recognized her with honorary degrees, reflecting not only artistic accomplishment but also the example she has set in perseverance, openness, and public service. She helped expand the vocabulary of modern stand-up by blending rigorous historical curiosity with free-form improvisation and by proving that a comic voice can travel, in multiple languages, without flattening its idiosyncrasies.

Her story is also a story of the people around her. The early loss of her mother, Dorothy, and the steadfast support of her father, Harold, shaped her empathy and drive. Creative partners like Sarah Townsend helped frame and document the journey, while colleagues such as Minnie Driver, Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Mads Mikkelsen, and many others met her on equal terms as an actor. Most enduringly, her collaboration with her brother Mark Izzard has threaded through projects from early ideas to ambitious one-person classics, underscoring that family, for her, has always been both origin and ongoing partnership. In that network of care and craft, Eddie Izzard has built a public life that treats comedy as a human right: the right to imagine, to connect, and to keep going.

Our collection contains 10 quotes who is written by Eddie, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Justice - Music - Live in the Moment.