63 Facts About Steve Coogan

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

Steve Coogan's accolades include four BAFTA Awards and three British Comedy Awards, and nominations for two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.

Steve Coogan is best known for his character Alan Partridge, a socially inept and politically incorrect media personality, which he developed while working with Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris 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 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 re-edited into films.

In 1999, Steve Coogan co-founded the production company Baby Cow Productions with Henry Normal.

Steve Coogan has played dramatic roles, including Marie Antoinette, What Maisie Knew, The Look of Love and The Dinner.

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 what he described as a "lower middle-class or upper working-class" family which emphasised the values of education.

Steve Coogan's elder brother Martin is a musician, while his younger brother Brendan is a presenter.

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

Steve Coogan's father stood for the SDP-Liberal Alliance in the Middleton South ward at the Rochdale Borough Council elections in both May 1983 and May 1984.

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

Steve Coogan passed two O-levels in 1983, which were likely re-take exams, aged 17.

Steve Coogan's sister trained to be a teacher at the nearby Hopwood Hall College.

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,.

Steve Coogan starred in BBC2's The Private Life of Samuel Pepys in 2003, and Cruise of the Gods in 2002 and portrayed Factory Records boss, Tony Wilson in the film, 24 Hour Party People.

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.

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.

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.

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

Steve Coogan produced, co-wrote and co-starred in the drama film Philomena.

Steve Coogan portrayed the journalist Martin Sixsmith, who helps a former resident of an Irish Roman Catholic mother and baby home, Philomena Lee, played by Judi Dench, find her son after decades long absence.

Steve Coogan starred in the 2022 film The Lost King, playing the husband of the writer Philippa Langley, who discovered the bones of King Richard III.

Steve Coogan played Jimmy Savile in the BBC One series The Reckoning.

Steve Coogan appeared in the 2024 film Joker: Folie a Deux as Paddy Meyers, a TV personality who interviews the Joker.

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 and they divorced in 2005.

Steve Coogan dated the model China Chow for three years.

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

Steve Coogan was again spared six penalty points and a six-month ban for speeding in February 2025, reduced to five points and two months as a longer ban would have prevented filming of a new series of The Trip, which would have affected the many people involved.

Steve Coogan has been open about his depression and past drug use.

Steve Coogan described himself as "half-Irish" in an interview in 2020, and was granted an Irish passport in March 2023.

Steve Coogan has supported the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.

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

Steve Coogan endorsed the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the 2017 general election.

In December 2019, along with 42 other cultural figures, Steve Coogan signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party in the election.

In September 2023, Steve Coogan addressed the Liberal Democrat Conference by video link, expressing that he would tactically vote for the Liberal Democrats over the Labour Party in the 2024 general election, as "the candidate best placed to kick the Tories out is the Lib Dem candidate".

In October, Steve Coogan was among more than 2,000 cultural figures to sign a letter calling for a Gaza ceasefire and accused the UK government of "not only tolerating war crimes but aiding and abetting them" in the wake of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war.

In June 2024, Steve Coogan was one of more than 100 cultural figures to sign a letter calling for Labour to halt sales of arms to Israel if it is elected.

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