Sacha Baron Cohen
Sacha Baron Cohen is a British comedian and actor known for his provocative and satirical comedic style, which often involves the creation of fictional personas that reveal societal prejudices. Born on October 13, 1971, in London, he gained prominence in the U.S. with his 2006 film "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." This mockumentary showcased his character Borat, a faux Kazakh journalist, as he navigated American culture, exposing attitudes toward race, sexuality, and gender. Baron Cohen also created characters such as Ali G, a parody of a wannabe gangster, and Bruno, a flamboyant fashionista, both designed to highlight the absurdities of societal norms.
Educated at Cambridge University, where he developed his improvisational skills, Baron Cohen initially pursued comedy after a brief stint in investment banking. He is also known for his more serious roles in films directed by notable filmmakers like Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese. In addition to his film work, he returned to television with the Showtime series "Who Is America?" and revived Borat in a sequel released in 2020. Baron Cohen maintains a private life while actively engaging in social issues, particularly around racism and anti-Semitism, reflecting his commitment to highlighting prejudice through his work. He has been married to actress Isla Fisher and has three children.
Sacha Baron Cohen
In 2006, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen became widely known in the United States following the release of his controversial film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Already popular in his native United Kingdom, Baron Cohen's comedy is based upon his adoption of specific personas whose own cultural prejudices, in turn, reveal the bigotry of the larger society. An intensely private person when not in character, he has earned comparisons to Peter Sellers and Lenny Bruce.
Early Life
Sacha Noam Baron Cohen was born on October 13, 1971, in London. His Israeli mother was a fitness instructor, and his Welsh father owned a clothing store. A middle child, he attended the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School and first started acting in his Jewish youth group. He discovered a love of breakdancing and, with his friends, formed Black and White, a troupe that would perform at parties and bar mitzvahs. As a teenager, he spent a year on a kibbutz (a collective community usually agriculturally oriented) in Israel before going to university.
He studied history at Christ's College, Cambridge, and wrote his thesis on Jewish participation in the United States civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. While researching his thesis, he became the first person to interview civil rights activist Robert Parris Moses in more than twenty years. He considered continuing his studies to the Ph.D. level before deciding to enter comedy. While at Cambridge, he was a member of the famous Footlights comedy troupe, and it was there that he revealed a talent for improvisation, as well as a skilled ability to create personas.
Comedy
Following university and a brief stint as an investment banker, Baron Cohen spent time as a stand-up comedian, working on developing his humor and characters. He gave himself a limit of five years, after which, if he had not achieved success, he would attend law school or find some other "proper" career.
In 1998, he earned a role on The 11 O'Clock Show, a comedy program where he introduced his Ali G character. The character later was awarded his own show, which won an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for best comedy series in 2001. In 2002, the series was followed by a film, Ali G Indahouse. The film was not a success, but it did lead to a new version of Da Ali G Show on HBO, introducing him to American audiences. The show followed a chat format where unsuspecting guests, often not realizing that Ali G was simply a persona, were subjected to ridiculous questions. The character became a phenomenon in England.
Da Ali G Show provided an arena to introduce a new character, Borat. In 2006, Borat was the star of a mock documentary, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Borat, the fake Kazakhstani journalist, travels around the United States revealing attitudes about the nonwestern world, race, sexuality, gender, and more. The film was a huge commercial success but led to lawsuits from a number of Americans who were featured in the film. It also drew intense criticism from Kazakhstan. Despite the controversy, Baron Cohen won a Golden Globe for the role and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Academy Awards ceremony was one of the few public events where Baron Cohen did not appear as Borat.
In a change of pace, Baron Cohen turned to more serious roles in films, appearing in several movies made by some of Hollywood's best directors in the mid-2000s. These included Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the popular children's book Hugo (2011). In Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), Baron Cohen portrayed Abbie Hoffman, one of a group of activists brought to trial for antiwar activities during the late 1960s. He also created a new comedic character in 2012, General Aladeen, the ruler of a fictitious North African country, who was the star of the film The Dictator, released that year. In 2018, Baron Cohen returned to television with a new series on Showtime, Who Is America?, in which he played various characters who interviewed different Americans, including celebrities and politicians, in the same vein as Da Ali G Show. The show was nominated for two Emmy Awards in 2019, including for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. Reviving the character of Borat, Baron Cohen released a sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, in 2020, on Amazon Prime. The film won two Golden Globe Awards, including the Best Actor award for Baron Cohen. The film was notable for its scene involving US President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who engaged in allegedly inappropriate behavior with one of the film's costars. In 2021, Baron Cohen lent his voice to the animated film Luca. In 2024, Cohen appeared in the Apple TV+ drama Disclaimer, a series about a TV journalist whose dark secret comes back to haunt her.
Characters
Sacha Baron Cohen is best known for three characters he created: Ali G, Borat, and Bruno. Most personal appearances and television interviews have been in the guise of one of these characters, as he is careful to maintain a private life away from the cameras. In fact, for some time, the public did not realize that these personas were not real people.
Ali G is a White male who pretends to be a Jamaican Londoner gang member. Borat is a naïve, anti-Semitic Kazakhstani reporter, and Bruno is a gay Austrian fashion expert.
The characters are linked by one singular achievement: they reveal the very real prejudices of people. Ali G makes a mockery of White suburban boys who try to sound and act like inner-city gang members. Borat, the character, may be misogynistic and racist, but in the films, he was a means to expose the racism and prejudices of those caught on camera. People became more willing to let down their guard and, in doing so, revealed their own prejudices; sometimes, they revealed their own complacency or apathy in the face of racist or offensive behavior. The audience is made to feel uncomfortable at the same time that they are laughing.
Because they had become so well known, and the element of comedy that resulted from their obscurity was lost, Cohen retired the Ali G. and Borat characters in 2008. (He would later bring Borat out of retirement.) Baron Cohen spent much of that same year working on a film as his Bruno character, this time revealing society's homophobia.
In 2008, Baron Cohen was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. His 2010 movie Brüno, a lampooning of the global fashion industry, proved widely popular.
Personal Life
Baron Cohen is extremely careful to maintain his personal privacy, and for some time only appeared in public in character. In the late 2010s, Baron Cohen became more vocal on issues of racism. In 2019, he was the keynote speaker at the Anti-Defamation League's annual summit. His speech, which touched on the dangers of Facebook and other social media platforms in perpetuating racism and bigotry, led to the Stop Hate for Profit campaign—a group of nonprofits and businesses that work to hold social media accountable for hate appearing on their platforms. He follows Jewish religious traditions closely, refusing to work on the Sabbath and maintaining a kosher household.
On October 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a coordinated attack into Isarel that left more than 1,100 people dead. Israel responded by launching an air and ground assault on Hamas positions in the Gaza Strip. The death toll in the ensuing conflict was estimated at more than 40,000 by late 2024. In the wake of the attack, Cohen was outspoken in his support of Israel in its confrontation with Hamas. In November 2023, Coehn and several other Jewish celebrities criticized the social media platform TikTok for encouraging antisemitism, claiming the platform was allowing people with extreme anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian viewpoints to promote hateful speech.
Baron Cohen and Australian actor Isla Fisher had three children—Olive, born in 2007, Elula, born in 2011, and Montgomery, born in 2015. The couple filed for divorce in 2023.
By Fiona Young-Brown
Bibliography
Collin, Robbie. "Sacha Baron Cohen Is the Peter Sellers of Our Age." The Telegraph, 26 Feb. 2016, www.telegraph.co.uk/film/grimsby/sacha-baron-cohen-peter-sellers-characters/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
Dowd, Maureen. "Sacha Baron Cohen: This Time He's Serious." The New York Times, 17 Oct. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/10/17/style/sacha-baron-cohen-maureen-dowd-interview.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
Hibberd, James. “Sacha Baron Cohen Slams TikTok: 'Creating Biggest Antisemitic Movement Since the Nazis'.” Hollywood Reporter, 17 Nov. 2023, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/sacha-baron-cohen-amy-schumer-jewish-celebrities-tiktok-antisemitism-1235657209/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
"Sacha Baron Cohen." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0056187/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.
Shoard. Catherine. "Sacha Baron Cohen: 'If You're Protesting Against Racism, You're Going to Upset Some Racists.'" The Guardian, 19 Feb. 2021, www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/19/sacha-baron-cohen-borat-trial-chicago-7-facebook-trump. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.