Eddie Izzard: comedy, performance and a life beyond the stage

Eddie Izzard’s comedy can move from a historical reference to a linguistic detour and then into an absurd story that seems to have arrived from nowhere. That free-associating, surreal style made her one of Britain’s most recognisable stand-up performers. Her career has also ranged across theatre, film and television, while her public self-expression and demanding charity challenges have brought other dimensions to her work.

Finding a comic voice

Born in Aden on 7 February 1962 to English parents, Izzard moved with her family first to Northern Ireland and then to Wales. Her mother, Dorothy, died of cancer when Izzard was six. Izzard later attended schools in England and studied drama at the University of Sheffield. At university, she and fellow student Rob Ballard began experimenting with comedy, taking their act to the streets, including London’s Covent Garden. After they went their separate ways, Izzard continued as a street performer in Europe and the United States.

Talking to audiences during solo escape acts helped her develop a comic voice before she moved into British stand-up venues. Her first stage appearance at London’s Comedy Store came in 1987. Recognition grew through the early 1990s, including an appearance on the televised AIDS benefit Hysteria 3 in 1991. Izzard’s delivery often sounds like a stream of consciousness, but its apparent leaps connect everyday observations with history, religion, popular culture and language. She has described storytelling as an oral tradition; surrealism and satire sit alongside the sense of a performer thinking aloud with the audience.

Her touring shows carried that approach to increasingly large audiences. They included Live at the Ambassadors (1993), Definite Article (1996), Glorious (1997), Dress to Kill (1998), Circle (2000), Stripped (2009), Force Majeure (2013) and Wunderbar (2022). For Dress to Kill, she won two Primetime Emmy Awards in 2000, for individual performance and writing in a variety or music programme.

From the West End to international screens

Izzard’s acting career developed alongside her stand-up. In 1994, she made her West End drama debut in David Mamet’s The Cryptogram, followed by a role in 900 Oneonta. She played the title role in Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II in 1995, and later portrayed Lenny Bruce in the play Lenny. In 2001 she took a leading role in Peter Nichols’s A Day in the Death of Joe Egg; the production transferred to Broadway in 2003, where Izzard received a Tony Award nomination.

On screen, roles have included Roman Nagel in Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, Erich Fellgiebel in Valkyrie and Dr Abel Gideon in the television series Hannibal. Her television work has also included The Riches, The Day of the Triffids and The Lost Symbol. As a voice actor, she has appeared in films including Five Children and It, The Wild and Cars 2. These varied parts have taken her beyond comic performance without displacing the stage work that first established her.

In 2024, Izzard performed a one-person version of Hamlet in New York, in an adaptation by her brother Mark and directed by Selina Cadell. After its run there was extended, the production transferred to London’s Riverside Studios. Her career has also included performances in languages beyond English: she has performed stand-up in French and, since 2014, in Arabic, German, Russian and Spanish.

Public identity and political activity

Izzard has spoken publicly over many years about gender and clothing. She has described knowing from childhood that she wanted to wear dresses, and began identifying publicly as a transvestite in venues including the Edinburgh Festival in the early 1990s. In 1994, she put her position simply: “women wear what they want and so do I.” She has later described herself as genderfluid and, in 2020, requested she/her pronouns for an appearance on Portrait Artist of the Year, saying she wanted to be based in “girl mode” from then on. In 2023, she said she would use the name Suzy in addition to Eddie, while keeping Eddie Izzard as her public name because it was more widely recognised.

Her public life has also included sustained political activity. Izzard joined the Labour Party in 1995, appeared in party political broadcasts and campaigned for Labour candidates. She twice sought election to the party’s National Executive Committee; after Christine Shawcroft resigned in 2018, Izzard took her place as the next runner-up, but did not secure re-election that summer. Later attempts to become Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Central and Brighton Pavilion were unsuccessful.

Izzard has also campaigned for European integration and described herself as a “British-European”. Other causes she has backed include replacing first-past-the-post voting with the alternative vote and a democratically elected head of state. The combination of political campaigning, multilingual performance and an international working life gives a particular shape to her public connection with Britain: her career is rooted in British comedy and theatre, while repeatedly crossing national and cultural boundaries.

Endurance for charity

In 2009, with only five weeks’ training and no significant previous long-distance running experience, Izzard ran 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief. The route crossed the UK, taking her from London to Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh before returning to London. She covered more than 1,100 miles, running at least a marathon distance on each running day. The challenge drew attention not just for its scale but for the way it made her own endurance the means of raising money for others. She received a special award at BBC Sports Personality of the Year that year.

In 2016, she ran 27 marathons in 27 days in South Africa in honour of Nelson Mandela, whose 27 years in prison gave the challenge its number. After spending a day in hospital, she completed two marathons on the final day, finishing at the Mandela statue outside the Union Buildings in Pretoria. The event raised more than £1.35 million for Sport Relief. In January 2021, she took on another month-long challenge, attempting 31 marathons and 31 stand-up performances in 31 days; the marathons raised more than £275,000 for a range of charities.

Why Eddie Izzard deserves a place in British Legacy

Eddie Izzard’s place in British Legacy rests first on a distinctive contribution to British comedy. From street performance and the Comedy Store to major tours and award-winning television specials, she developed a form of stand-up that makes language, history and apparently wayward associations part of the performance. The two Emmy Awards for Dress to Kill mark the achievement of that work, while her stage and screen roles show a career not confined to one comic persona. Her West End and Broadway appearances, including the Tony-nominated A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, connect her story to a wider tradition of British theatre as well as to international audiences.

Her legacy also lies in the way her work has joined public visibility with action. Izzard has spoken openly about gender expression over decades, and her own account of clothing and identity has made those subjects part of her public career rather than a private footnote. Her charity runs translated attention into substantial fundraising: more than £1.35 million during the 2016 South African challenge alone, as well as money raised through the 2009 and 2021 efforts. These achievements offer a specific British connection: a performer formed in British comedy and theatre who has used that platform for ambitious public challenges, political engagement and performances across languages. Taken together, they make her story one of artistic range, personal expression and measurable charitable effort.

Sources

Eddie Izzard — Wikipedia revision 1379581837

Adapted in part from Eddie Izzard by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.