Steve Cogan

Born in Middleton, Greater Manchester, in the northwest of England, on October 14, 1965, Stephen John Coogan comes from a family with Irish roots. “The older I get, the more Irish I feel,” he often says. His parents gave him a Catholic education, sending him to study at the Cardinal Langley religious school, in his hometown, although today he defines himself as an atheist. “I had a very happy childhood with my four brothers and my sister,” he has pointed out in interviews. “I wanted to go to drama school, but a teacher advised me not to, because it might give me trouble earning a living.” Despite everything, he applied to be admitted to several acting schools in London, which rejected him, until he got a place at the Manchester School of Drama.

Upon leaving, he kicked off his career with live comedic performances. He began to achieve immense prestige in the audiovisual world as a regular dubber for Spitting Images ., puppets that represented well-known characters from British politics, which became very popular, and even inspired the Guiñoles, on the Spanish channel Canal +. For example, he lent his voice to the doll of Prime Minister John Major. His face became popular in his country with humorous television programs in which he represented characters such as Paul Calf, a typical foul-mouthed worker in Great Britain, and above all Alan Partridge, a parody of British television celebrities. He almost always wrote the dialogues himself. But he never wanted to stay in the field of laughter. “You get typecast,” he recalls. “I love doing comedy, but you want to do more things. I want to do creative and challenging things. So you do things outside of your comfort zone that involve risks. I want to explore life from different prisms”.

He debuted as an actor on the big screen with The Magic Key , adaptation of the novel for young adults by Lynne Reid Banks , where he played a military doctor. After a small role in the comedy Parole Officer , the prolific Michael Winterbottom recruits him to star in 24 Hour Party People , the film that changed his career forever. He played a real character, the businessman and presenter Tony Wilson, who at the end of the 80s attended a Sex Pistols concert, which inspired him to create a record label and a nightclub, with which he would change the music scene of the epoch. The filmmaker recruited him again, first to lead the cast ofTristram Shandy: a Cook and a Bull Story , an experimental film inspired by “Tristan Shandy”, the classic of British literature, impossible to bring to the screen. In The Trip , also by Winterbottom, he played himself, touring the north of England for several days to sample dishes from sophisticated restaurants, along with his partner Rob Brydon . His success led to two other feature films Viaje a Italia , where they repeated the play in the Mediterranean country, and The Trip To Spain , and the television series The Trip, where each chapter is dedicated to a different location.

In the 90s, Steve Coogan had a long love relationship with Anna Cole, a lawyer who became the mother of Clare, his only daughter. After the breakup, he married Caroline Hickman in 2002, but they would divorce very soon, in 2005. After spending time in a rehabilitation clinic for personal problems, he has had relationships aired by the British tabloids, with two models, the American China Chow, and the British Elle Basey.

In recent years Steve Coogan has played numerous supporting roles, sometimes in Hollywood productions, such as Night at the Museum , and its two sequels, where he played Octavius, a reproduction of a Roman general who comes to life, like everything else. Exhibits at the Museum of Natural History in New York. In Tropic Thunder, A Very Bitch War , he was a crew member, in Sofia Coppola ‘s Marie Antoinette , an ambassador, in Peggy Jackson and the Lightning Thief the Greek god Hades, and a political activist in the satire In the Loop . At the same time he appeared in various television series, such as Saxondale, Sunshine , or Happyish , little known outside of the UK.

The king of American independent cinema, Jim Jarmusch , recruited him as the lead in Cousins , one of the segments in Coffee and Cigarettes . He also did a good job on Oren Moverman ‘s irregular Dinner , where he was a passionate teacher of history, concerned about the lack of interest in discipline among students. As the protagonist, he stood out as the art dealer who divorces his wife, to the despair of his little girl, in What Do We Do With Maisie? , by Scott McGehee and David Siegel , where he came out on top of his duel with a heavyweight, actress Julianne Moore, not an easy task.

But above all, he shone in the drama based on a true case Philomena , by Stephen Frears , where he was next to another of the greats of interpretation, Judi Dench . She played a cynical and disbelieving political journalist, who helps an old woman (Dench) look for her son, given up for adoption. He wrote the script himself, with Jeff Pope , adapted from Martin Sixsmith ‘s book, for which they were awarded the BAFTA. In addition, he received two Oscar nominations, again as a screenwriter, but also another for his status as producer, since the film competed in the best film category. “What convinced me for this project was finding a photograph of Martin with Philomena on a bench. They seemed like an odd couple to me. A journalist, intellectual, middle class, well educated, who meets this lower class retired Irish nurse. Their relationship seemed curious to me, ”she recalls.

Perhaps Steve Coogan carried out his best work in The Fat and the Skinny (Stan & Ollie) , by Jon S. Baird , with a script by the aforementioned Pope, where Stan Laurel was the visible head of one of the most famous comic duos of the story, who, however, had not forgiven a small betrayal of his partner, Oliver Hardy , with gambling problems, also very well played by the great John C. Reilly . Both actors took advantage of the advances in prosthetic makeup to acquire an identical appearance to those portrayed, but this did not prevent them from taking an acting lesson, nor did it diminish their expressiveness. On the heels of that, he’s back at old pal Winterbottom’s call for a small role in Greed , billed as a satirical look at the world of super-millionaires. In October 2015, she released the book “Easily Distracted”, his autobiography.