51 Facts About Steve Coogan

Stephen John Coogan is an English actor, comedian, producer, and screenwriter.

Steve Coogan is most known for creating original characters such as Alan Partridge, a socially inept and politically incorrect media personality, which he developed while working with Armando Iannucci on On the Hour and The Day Today.

Steve Coogan began his career in the 1980s as a voice actor on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image and providing voice-overs for television advertisements.

Steve Coogan grew in prominence in the film industry in 2002, after starring in The Parole Officer and 24 Hour Party People.

Steve Coogan has appeared in films such as Around the World in 80 Days, Hamlet 2, Tropic Thunder, The Other Guys, Ruby Sparks, and the Night at the Museum films, and Greed.

Steve Coogan co-starred as himself with Rob Brydon in A Cock and Bull Story, and the BBC series The Trip, The Trip to Italy, The Trip to Spain, and The Trip to Greece, all of which were condensed into films.

Stephen John Steve Coogan was born on 14 October 1965 in Middleton, Lancashire, the son of housewife Kathleen and IBM engineer Anthony "Tony" Steve Coogan.

Steve Coogan has four brothers and one sister, and was raised Roman Catholic in a "lower-middle or upper-working class" family which emphasised the values of education.

Steve Coogan attended St Thomas More Roman Catholic Primary School and Cardinal Langley Roman Catholic High School.

Steve Coogan has stated that he had a happy childhood, and his parents fostered children on a short-term basis.

Steve Coogan had a talent for impersonation and wanted to go to drama school, despite being advised by a teacher that it could lead to a precarious profession.

Steve Coogan began his career as a comic and impressionist, performing regularly in Ipswich, before working as a voice artist for television advertisements and the satirical puppet show Spitting Image.

In 1992, Steve Coogan won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for his performance with long-time collaborator John Thomson, and starred alongside him and Caroline Aherne in a one-off Granada TV sketch show, The Dead Good Show.

Steve Coogan described Partridge as a Little Englander, with right-wing values and poor taste.

Steve Coogan is socially inept, often offending his guests, and has an inflated sense of importance and celebrity.

In 1997, Steve Coogan starred as Partridge in a BBC sitcom, I'm Alan Partridge, written by Steve Coogan, Iannucci and Peter Baynham, following Partridge's life in a roadside hotel working for a small radio station.

Steve Coogan said he did not want to say goodbye to Partridge, and that "as long as I can do my other things, that, to me, is the perfect balance".

Steve Coogan later said that Partridge had once been an "albatross" but had become "a battered, comfortable old leather jacket".

Paul has appeared in two video diaries, an episode of Steve Coogan's Run, and in various stand-up performances.

Steve Coogan is an unemployed Mancunian wastrel with a particular hatred of students.

Steve Coogan's catchphrase, spoken to disparage something or someone, is "Bag o' shite".

Steve Coogan wears Burton suits, sports a bleached mullet hairstyle, and drives a Ford Cortina.

Steve Coogan has provided voices for the animated series I Am Not an Animal and Bob and Margaret, two Christmas specials featuring Robbie the Reindeer, and an episode of the BBC Radio Four spoof sci-fi series Nebulous.

Steve Coogan played the Gnat in the 1998 TV adaptation of Alice Through the Looking-Glass starring Kate Beckinsale, and starred in BBC2's The Private Life of Samuel Pepys in 2003, and Cruise of the Gods in 2002.

In 2007, Steve Coogan played a psychiatrist on Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO, and in 2008, starred in the BBC1 drama Sunshine.

Second, in 2006 Steve Coogan starred with Rob Brydon in Michael Winterbottom's A Cock and Bull Story, a self-referential film of the "unfilmable" self-referential novel Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne.

Steve Coogan worked again with director Winterbottom in The Look of Love, about '50s porn-king, Paul Raymond.

The first film that Steve Coogan co-wrote with Henry Normal was The Parole Officer, in which he acted alongside Ben Miller and Lena Headey.

Steve Coogan has an uncredited cameo in Hot Fuzz, scripted by Shaun of the Dead writers Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

Steve Coogan starred in the Night at the Museum trilogy in which he played Octavius, a miniature Roman general figure, alongside Owen Wilson's Jedediah, a miniature cowboy figure.

Steve Coogan's most acclaimed work to date is the dramedy, Philomena, which he co-wrote, produced, and starred in with Judi Dench.

In September 2020, Steve Coogan announced that he would star in an upcoming movie about finding the bones of King Richard III.

The movie, titled, The Lost King was released in 2022, starring Sally Hawkins in the lead role of Philippa Langley, with Steve Coogan playing her husband, John.

Steve Coogan has been critical of the broadsheet press, saying they have colluded with the tabloids in the interests of selling newspapers.

Steve Coogan has said that the press, by persistently intruding in his private life, has effectively made him "immune" to further attack as his "closet is empty of skeletons".

Steve Coogan became a prominent figure in the News International phone hacking scandal as one of the celebrities who took action against the British tabloids in light of these events.

Steve Coogan was made aware by his phone service provider of "possible anomalies" on his phone in 2005 and 2006.

Steve Coogan said the idea of press freedom was used by the tabloids as a "smokescreen for selling papers with tittle-tattle" and said the argument against press regulation was "morally bankrupt".

Steve Coogan provided an eight-page witness statement to the Leveson Inquiry, and appeared at the inquiry on 22 November 2011 to discuss the evidence.

Steve Coogan said he was there reluctantly representing a lot of celebrities who felt they could not speak out for fear of reprisals from the tabloid press.

Steve Coogan married Caroline Hickman in 2002; they divorced in 2005.

In March 2011, Steve Coogan was guest editor for lads mag Loaded, where he met and began dating glamour model Loretta "Elle" Basey.

Steve Coogan has a daughter from a previous four-year relationship with solicitor Anna Cole.

Steve Coogan has been open about his struggle with depression and has said "I will always be a recovering addict".

Until 2017, Steve Coogan resided in Ovingdean Grange in Ovingdean, East Sussex.

Steve Coogan announced, on an episode of The Late Late Show, in January 2019, that he was "half-way through" the process of applying for Irish citizenship.

Steve Coogan believes that the Conservative Party think "people are plebs" and that "they like to pat people on the head".

Steve Coogan voiced his support for abolishing the British monarchy in 2013.

In June 2017, Steve Coogan endorsed Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 UK general election.

In November 2019, along with other public figures, Steve Coogan signed a letter defending Corbyn, describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism, xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 general election.

Steve Coogan has won numerous awards for his work in TV including British Comedy Awards, BAFTAs and The South Bank Show award for comedy.