The Real Sacha Baron Cohen!
You’re more likely to know more about Sacha Baron Cohen’s characters than the man himself. From Borat, Brüno and his latest character Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PHD, in his new show Who Is America? Sacha Baron Cohen’s projects often hit a chord with audiences not only because he tricks the people he’s interviewing into believing the character he’s playing but because he makes it look flawless! Whether you think he’s a genius, the premier in-character satirist of his time, hilarious or just mean he’s definitely worth talking about. We wanted to know more about the man behind the crazy characters and here’s what we found out.
Sacha Noam Baron
Cohen was born in Hammersmith, West London. His mother, Daniella Naomi, worked as a movement instructor, while his father, Gerald Baron Cohen was a clothing store owner born in London, and raised in Wales. After graduating from Christ’s College, Cambridge, Sacha briefly worked as a fashion model before hosting low-paying local and regional TV shows in the early 1990s – who would have thought!
This is interesting.
Sacha went to clown college! He underwent clown training in Paris, at the Ecole Philippe Gaulier, studying under master-clown Philippe Gaulier. Of his former pupil, Gaulier says: “He was a good clown, full of spirit”. So it seems, that from the very start of his career Sacha was interested to work in complete character. In fact, Sacha avoids doing interviews out of character. He has twice presented the MTV Europe Music Awards, first as Ali G on 2001, in Frankfurt, Germany, and then as Borat in 2005 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Some of Sacha’s
most famous characters include, Ali G, Borat Sagdiyev, Brüno Gehard, Admiral General Aladeen and Nobby Butcher. However Sacha has retired most of these characters. What makes Sacha’s comedy work is being in character and interacting with unsuspecting people who don’t realise they are being set up. So when his characters became too famous he decided to retire Borat, Ali G, and Brüno.
Sacha Cohen first
met Australian actress Isla Fisher in 2002 at a party in Sydney, Australia. The couple became engaged in 2004, and married on 15 March 2010 in Paris, France. Baron Cohen and Fisher have two daughters - Olive, born 19 October 2007 in Los Angeles, and Elula Lottie Miriam, born in August 2010 - and a son Montgomery Moses Brian, born 17 March 2015. In 2015, Sacha and Isla donated £335,000 to Save the Children as part of a program to vaccinate children in Northern Syria against measles, and the same amount to the International Rescue Committee also aimed at helping Syrian refugees.
While filming
Borat the FBI created a file on Sacha. This isn’t a joke! After a number of complaints from people stating that a Middle Eastern man was filming himself acting strange in public, the FBI kept a close eye on him! Also, while filming Brüno, Cohen was banned from Milan Fashion Week, and press releases were distributed to have people be on the lookout for Brüno. Despite this, Sacha still managed to smuggle himself into the fashion show of Agatha Ruiz De La Prada by pretending to be an Italian photographer. After crashing the event as Brüno, he was arrested and detained for questioning.