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Lenny Henry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Lenny Henry (born Lenny Hinton on August 29, 1958 in Dudley, West Midlands) is a British entertainer.
His earliest TV
appearances were on the New Faces TV talent show in the 1970s where he
was a repeat winner. His formative years were in working men's clubs
where his unique act - a young black man impersonating white characters
such as Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em - gave him an edge
in what were racially divisive times. Subsequently he was a comedy
performer on The Black and White Minstrel Show.
Later he appeared on
the children's programme Tiswas and subsequently the show Three of a
Kind with comedians Tracey Ullman and David Copperfield. Around this
time he met his future wife, Dawn French, who encouraged him to move
over to the fledgling alternative comedy scene, where he established a
career as a stand-up comedy performer and character comedian. He
introduced characters which both mocked and celebrated black British
culture, such as Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (a Barry White-a-like),
Brixton pirate radio DJ Delbert Wilkins and Trevor MacDoughnut (a spoof
on Trevor McDonald). Much of his stand-up material, which was
enormously popular on recorded LP, owed much to the writing abilities
of Kim Fuller.
Henry's TV work
started pricipally with his own self-titled show, which has appeared in
variant forms ever since. He was also a part-time member of The Comic
Strip.
In the early 1990s,
Henry was lured to Hollywood to star in the film True Identity, in
which his character spent most of the film pretending to be a white
person in order to avoid the mob. The film was not successful, and it
has been suggested that part of the problem was that the film's
producers didn't really understand Henry and used him in a project that
wasn't a good match for his talents.
Henry is perhaps
best known to modern audiences as the choleric chef of the comedic
1990s television series Chef!. In 1999 he also had a successful
straight-acting lead role in the BBC drama Hope And Glory and tried his
hand at soul singing. He would later say that both moves were not
showing him at his best and that he felt most comfortable with
character comedy, returning to the BBC to do Lenry Henry in Pieces, a
character-based comedy sketch show.
In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest people in British comedy.
He is married to
comedy actress Dawn French. They have an adopted daughter.
Henry is also one of the celebrities most associated with the British
Comic Relief charity organisation along with Griff Rhys Jones.
He lent his voice to the "shrunken head" on the triple decker bus in the 2004 movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Lenny Henry Official Website
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