54 Facts About Eddie Izzard

Suzy Eddie Izzard is a British stand-up comedian, actor and activist.

Eddie Izzard starred in the television series The Riches, and has appeared in numerous films, including Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Valkyrie, Absolutely Anything and Six Minutes to Midnight.

Eddie Izzard has worked as a voice actor on films such as Five Children and It, The Wild, The Lego Batman Movie and the Netflix original series Green Eggs and Ham.

In 2009, Eddie Izzard completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief, despite having no history of long-distance running.

In 2022, Eddie Izzard attempted to become the party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Central, but was not selected in the members' ballot.

Eddie Izzard's mother was a midwife and nurse, while her father was an accountant who was working in Aden for British Petroleum at the time of her birth.

Eddie Izzard has a brother named Mark, who is two years older.

When Eddie Izzard was a year old, the family moved to Northern Ireland and settled in Bangor, where they lived until Eddie Izzard was five.

Eddie Izzard has said that she knew she was transgender at the age of four, after watching a boy being forced to wear a dress by his sisters, and knew she wanted to be an actor at the age of seven.

Eddie Izzard began to toy with comedy while at university with her friend Rob Ballard.

Eddie Izzard says that she developed her comedic voice by talking to the audience while doing solo escape acts.

Eddie Izzard then moved her act to the stand-up comedy venues of Britain, performing her routine for the first time at the Banana Cabaret in London's Balham area.

In 1987, Eddie Izzard made her first stage appearance at the Comedy Store in London.

Eddie Izzard refined her comedy material throughout the 1980s began earning recognition through improvisation in the early 1990s, in part at her own club, Raging Bull in Soho.

Eddie Izzard's breakthrough came in 1991 after she performed her "raised by wolves" routine on the televised Hysteria 3 AIDS benefit.

In 2000, for her comedy special Dress to Kill, Eddie Izzard won two Primetime Emmy Awards: Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program and Outstanding Writing for a Variety or Music Program, while the special was nominated for Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Special.

Eddie Izzard is fluent in French and has performed stand-up shows in the language; since 2014, she has started to perform in Arabic, German, Russian, and Spanish, languages that she did not previously speak.

In 1994, Eddie Izzard made her West End drama debut as the lead in the world premiere of David Mamet's The Cryptogram with Lindsay Duncan, in the production at London's Comedy Theatre.

In 1998, Eddie Izzard appeared briefly on stage with Monty Python in The American Film Institute's Tribute to Monty Python.

Eddie Izzard portrayed comedian Lenny Bruce in the 1999 production of Julian Barry's 1971 play Lenny.

Eddie Izzard has appeared in numerous films, starting with 1996's The Secret Agent, and has appeared as several real-life individuals, including Charlie Chaplin in The Cat's Meow, actor Gustav von Wangenheim in Shadow of the Vampire, General Erich Fellgiebel in Valkyrie and wartime pioneer of radar Robert Watson-Watt in the BBC drama film Castles in the Sky.

Eddie Izzard declined to reprise the role as Reepicheep, a role understudied by Simon Pegg in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Eddie Izzard has stated that she felt she learned to act while working on the film Circus.

Eddie Izzard appeared in the 2009 BBC science fiction miniseries The Day of the Triffids, based on the 1951 novel, alongside Jason Priestley, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, Dougray Scott and Brian Cox.

At the London 2012 Paralympic Games, Eddie Izzard presented the medals to the athletes who had won the 800m T54 race, including gold medalist David Weir.

Eddie Izzard has appeared on a number of episodes of BBC One's Have I Got News for You, and as a guest on The Daily Show.

On 27 July 2009, with only five weeks' training and no significant prior running experience, Eddie Izzard began seven weeks of back-to-back marathon runs across the UK to raise money for Sport Relief.

The blog Eddie Izzard Iz Running documented the 43 marathons in 51 days, covering at least 27 miles per day, ending on 15 September 2009.

Eddie Izzard received a special award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2009 for these achievements.

Eddie Izzard had attempted such a project in South Africa in 2012, but withdrew due to health concerns.

Eddie Izzard completed the first marathon on 23 February 2016, completing the marathon challenge on 20 March 2016 at the statue of Mandela in front of the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

On 8 December 2020, Eddie Izzard announced that she would attempt to run 31 marathons, and perform 31 stand-up gigs, in the 31 days of January 2021 to raise money for a range of charities including Fareshare, Walking With The Wounded, Care International, United to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases, and Covenant House.

Eddie Izzard is a vocal supporter of Europeanism and European integration, and has campaigned in support of the European Union.

Eddie Izzard campaigned in favour of replacing first-past-the-post with the alternative vote as a system for electing MPs in a 2011 referendum and is a supporter of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform.

Eddie Izzard is a proponent of British republicanism, believing that the UK should have a democratically elected head of state instead of a monarchy.

Eddie Izzard has stated that she is a social democrat, but not a socialist.

Eddie Izzard campaigned unsuccessfully against the closure of the departments of Drama and Languages, Linguistics and Translation at the University of East Anglia, although the department of Drama was later reprieved.

Eddie Izzard was named on a list of the biggest private donors to the party in 1998.

Eddie Izzard appeared in party political broadcasts for the Labour Party in the run-up to the 2005 general election and 2009 European election, as well as a 2010 election video entitled Brilliant Britain.

At various times, Eddie Izzard said she would run for Mayor of London in 2020.

Eddie Izzard unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in 2016 and 2018.

On 25 August 2022, Eddie Izzard said in an interview on BBC Radio Sheffield that she would like to ask the local Constituency Labour Party to stand in Sheffield Central, replacing the incumbent MP Paul Blomfield, who is standing down at the next election.

Eddie Izzard has cited Monty Python as her biggest influence, and Python member John Cleese once referred to her as "the lost Python".

Eddie Izzard is genderfluid and calls herself "somewhat boy-ish and somewhat girl-ish".

Eddie Izzard uses the word "transgender" as an umbrella term.

Eddie Izzard started to publicly identify as transvestite in venues such as the Edinburgh Festival as early as 1992.

Eddie Izzard keeps her romantic life private, citing the wishes of her companions not wanting to become content for her show.

Eddie Izzard once dated Irish singer Sarah Townsend, whom Izzard first met while running a venue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1989.

In 2003, Eddie Izzard received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, for her work promoting "modern languages and tolerance of other cultures and lifestyles", and for having "transcended national barriers" with humour.

Eddie Izzard has received honorary doctorates from the University of Sunderland in 2012, York St John University in 2018, and the University of Sheffield in 2006, where she had spent a year on an Accounting and Financial Management course in the early 1980s and established the now-defunct Alternative Productions Society in the Union of Students with the aim of promoting fringe-based arts.

Eddie Izzard was elected Honorary President of Sheffield's Students' Union in 2010.

Eddie Izzard's website won the Yahoo People's Choice Award in 2004 and a Webby Award in 2005.

In 2013, Eddie Izzard received the 6th Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism, which is presented at Harvard University each year by the Humanist Community at Harvard, the American Humanist Association, and the Harvard Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics.

In 2015, Eddie Izzard was chosen by readers of The Guardian as their 2014 public language champion.