Discover the Best Books Written by Eddie Izzard

Edward John Izzard is a British stand-up comedian, actor, and activist. Her[a] comedic style is what appears to the audience as rambling whimsical monologues and self-referential pantomime. Izzard's stand-up comedy tours have included Live at the Ambassadors (1993), Definite Article (1996), Glorious (1997), Dress to Kill (1998), Circle (2000), Stripped (2009), Force Majeure (2013) and, most recently, Wunderbar (2022). 

She starred in the 2007 television series The Riches and has appeared in numerous films, including Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, Shadow of the Vampire, The Cat's Meow, and Valkyrie. Izzard has also worked as a voice actor on films such as Five Children and It, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Abominable, and the Netflix original series Green Eggs and Ham. Among various accolades, she won two Primetime Emmys for Dress to Kill and was nominated for a Tony Award for her Broadway performance in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.

In 2009, Izzard completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief, despite having no history of long-distance running. In 2016, she ran 27 marathons in 27 days in South Africa in honor of Nelson Mandela, raising £1.35 million. In addition to her native English, she regularly performs stand-up in Arabic, French, German, Russian, and Spanish and actively supports Europeanism and the European Union.

A dedicated Labour Party activist, she twice ran unsuccessfully for the party's National Executive Committee but temporarily joined as runner-up after Christine Shawcroft resigned in March 2018. In 2022, Izzard attempted to become the party's prospective parliamentary candidate for Sheffield Central but was not selected in the members' ballot. Edward John Izzard was born in Aden (then in Aden Colony and now in Yemen) on 7 February 1962 to English parents Dorothy Ella Izzard (1927–1968) and Harold John Michael Izzard (1928–2018). 

Her surname is of French Huguenot origin. Her mother was a midwife and nurse, while her father was an accountant who was working in Aden for British Petroleum at the time of her birth. She has a brother named Mark, who is two years older. When Izzard was a year old, the family moved to Northern Ireland and settled in Bangor, where they lived until Izzard was five. The family then moved to Wales, where they lived in Skewen.

Izzard was six when her mother died of cancer. She and Mark built a model railway to occupy their time while their mother was ill, which was later donated to Bexhill Museum in 2016. Following their death, Izzard attended the private St John's School in Newton, St Bede's Prep School in Eastbourne, and Eastbourne College. She has said that she knew she was transgender at the age of four, after watching a boy being forced to wear a dress by his sisters, and knew she wanted to be an actor at the age of seven. She studied drama at the University of Sheffield.