Steve Coogan
Steve Coogan
Stephen John "Steve" Coogan is an English actor, stand-up comedian, impressionist, writer, and producer. He began his career in the 1980s, working as a voice artist on the satirical puppet show Spitting Image and providing voiceovers for television advertisements. In the early 1990s, he began creating original comic characters, leading him to win the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 1999, he co-founded the production company Baby Cow Productions...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth14 October 1965
CityMiddleton, England
What tends to happen in most movies is that strip clubs are used as a short hand for unsympathetic, sleazy people. And that's just a lazy cliché.
A woman wearing a revealing dress will always be sexier than a naked woman.
The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous.
The fundamentalists are insistent that they know best. It's a dictatorial attitude towards personal morality, which is a modern creation that came about in the 19th century.
I like to do movies that provoke rather than reinforce conservative values.
A lot of people can be very scared about making themselves vulnerable and appearing uncool. I don't really give a damn; as long as it's funny, I'll do it [make fun of myself].
I'm not elitist. I like to do crowd-pleasing stuff which is a bit smart, but is just about belly laughs.
That's what gives people hope - that you can still love someone from afar and you can still have those feelings across an ocean.
The one thing that gives you faith is the fact that people can be apart physically but they can still have an emotional connection.
No one has a monopoly on wisdom, and even for people who aren't religious, you can learn things from religious people.
I'm not like a politician that goes around talking about family values. And I can't get fired from being a funny person because I did something that most people are disapproving of. I think people are just obsessed with this morality that people perceive as being the right and wrong way of doing stuff.
If you're driving your car and someone winds the window down and gives you the finger and calls you an asshole, instead of giving him the finger back and calling him an asshole back, you just pull a funny face, and he doesn't know how to react to that, because you're using different rules.
The Church at its best is about empowering the disempowered and giving voice to the dispossessed and not putting a price on everything and not being about the bottom line and not worshipping the market or everything that is material.
I think if you try to look for something to show off as an actor, vanity can get the better of you.