Lenny Henry Biography
Lenny Henry who was born as Sir Lenworth George Henry is a British stand-up comedian, actor, singer, writer, and TV presenter.
He is known for being a co-founder of the charity, Comic Relief and also appearing in TV programs including a children’s entertainment show, Tiswas. As of now, he is the chancellor of Birmingham City University.
Lenworth George Henry was born at Burton Road Hospital in Dudley, on 29 August 1958. He is the child of Jamaican migrants to Great Britain. One of seven youngsters, he was the first to be conceived in the United Kingdom.
He went to St John’s Primary School and later The Blue Coat School in Dudley before finishing his tutoring at W.R. Tuson College in Preston, Lancashire.
He graduated with a degree in English Literature (BA Hons), from the Open University, in 2007. He read for an MA at Royal Holloway, the University of London in screenwriting for TV and film, where he got a qualification and in 2010 he started learning at a similar organization for a Ph.D. on the job of dark individuals in the media.
His Ph.D. was granted in July 2018 for a theory titled Does the Coach Have to be Black? The Sports Film, Screenwriting and Diversity: A Practice-Based Enquiry. Henry has been an open pundit of British TV’s absence of ethnic decent variety in its projects.
During a discourse at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in March 2014, he called the absence of minorities “horrifying” and he has kept on raising the issue openly. Henry is a long-lasting supporter of West Bromwich Albion Football Club.
Lenny Henry Age
He was born on 29 August 1958, at Burton Road Hospital, in Dudley.
Lenny Henry Family
After doing our research, details about his parents are not available and it is also not known if he has any siblings.
Wife
Henry met Dawn French on the elective satire circuit. They wedded in 1984 in Covent Garden, London. They embraced a little girl, called Billie. On 6 April 2010, French and Henry declared they were isolating following 25 years of marriage.
It was accounted for that the division was agreeable; they had chosen to isolate in October the earlier year yet left it up to that point as they were still in dialog over the partition. Their separation was settled in 2010.
Lenny Henry and Dawn French
SIR Lenny Henry has opened up about his part from Dawn French and conceded he had an inclination that he was living in a “goldfish bowl”. The 58-year-old split from Dawn following 25 years of marriage in 2010. Lenny uncovers their split was shared yet says it was made harder by living in general society eye.
Lenny Henry Body Measurements
Height; 6 ft 2 in
Weight; Not Available
Shoe Size; Not Available
Body Shape; Not Available
Hair Colour; Salt and Pepper
Eye Colour; Dark Brown
Lenny Henry Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $9 million or £7.01m.
Lenny Henry Weight Loss
Addressing The Mirror not long ago, Lenny said he increased the measure of vegetables he was eating to help shed the pounds. “All things considered, it’s eating broccoli and very little else,” the star clarified. He additionally uncovered he’s amped up the measure of activity, saying: “I’ve likewise been running a great deal.
It has worked.” When he previously ventured out with his slimmer physical make-up not long ago, the on-screen character stunned fans. There was then a ton of hypothesis regarding for what reason he’d dropped the weight, so he later cleared up the bits of gossip with the Daily Mail.
Lenny Henry Career
Henry’s first chief was Robert Luff, who marked him in 1975 and allowed him the chance to execute as a major aspect of the Luff-delivered visiting stage adaptation of The Black and White Minstrel Show, which everything considered has generally been viewed as a shame and one of the most bigots appears in British history.
In July 2009, Lenny Henry expressed he was legally obliged to perform and lamented his part in the show, disclosing to The Times in 2015 that his appearance on the demonstrate prompted a significant “wormhole of sorrow”, and lamented his family not interceding to keep him from proceeding in the show.
His soonest TV appearance was on the New Faces ability appear, which he won in 1975 with a pantomime of Stevie Wonder. The next year he showed up with Norman Beaton in LWT’s sitcom The Fosters, Britain’s first satire arrangement with transcendently dark entertainers.
His developmental years were spent in working men’s clubs, where he imitated mostly white characters, for example, the Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Them character Frank Spencer (whom he mimicked on New Faces). He additionally showed up on TV programs including Celebrity Squares, Seaside Special and The Ronnie Corbett Show.
In 1980, Henry performed in Summer Season in Blackpool with Cannon and Ball. He has since said that “the late spring season was the first run through [he] felt that [his] demonstration had gotten an appropriate reaction from a group of people”.
Around a similar time, he co-facilitated the youngsters’ program Tiswas from 1978 until 1981 playing such characters as Rastafarian Algernon Razzmatazz, David Bellamy and Trevor MacDoughnut (a spoof of Trevor McDonald), and in this way performed and composed for the show Three of a Kind.
Likewise in 1980, he collaborated with The Comic Strip where he met his significant other, humorist Dawn French. She urged him to move over to the youngster elective parody scene, where he built up a vocation as an outstanding satire entertainer and character comic.
He presented characters who both ridiculed and praised dark British culture, for example, Theophilus P. Wildebeeste (respect to Teddy Pendergrass utilizing the ‘TP’ initials) and Brixton privateer radio circle racer DJ Delbert Wilkins.
His high-quality material, which sold well on LP, owed a lot to the composing capacities of Kim Fuller. During this time he likewise went through three years as a DJ on BBC Radio 1, playing soul and electro tracks and presenting a portion of the characters that he would later advance on TV. He showed up in the last scene of The Young Ones as The Postman, in 1984.
The principal arrangement of The Lenny Henry Show showed up on the BBC in 1984. The show highlighted stand up, parodies like his send-up of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, and a large number of the characters he had created during Summer Season, including Theophilus P. Wildebeeste and Delbert Wilkins.
A foremost scriptwriter for his TV and stage appears during the 1990s was Jon Canter. The Lenny Henry Show ran intermittently for a further 19 years in different manifestations. He performed impressions, for example, Tina Turner, Prince, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Run DMC, among others.
Preceding the 1987 general political decision, Henry loaned his help to Red Wedge by taking part in a parody visit sorted out by the battle. In 1987, he showed up in a TV film, Coast to Coast. It was a satire spine chiller with John Shea around two DJs with a common enthusiasm for Motown music being pursued crosswise over Britain.
The film has a solid after, yet authoritative issues have kept it from being disseminated on record or DVD. In the mid-1990s, Henry featured in the Hollywood film True Identity, in which his character claimed to be a white individual (utilizing make-up, prostheses, and a wig) to stay away from the crowd.
The film was not monetarily fruitful. In 1991, he featured in a BBC dramatization nearby Robbie Coltrane called Alive and Kicking, in which he played a heroin someone who is addicted, which depended on a genuine story.
Additionally, in 1991, he featured in the Christmas satire Bernard and the Genie close by Alan Cumming and Rowan Atkinson. Henry is known as the irascible gourmet specialist Gareth Blackstock from the 1990s TV satire arrangement Chef!, or from his 1999 straight-acting lead job in the BBC dramatization Hope And Glory. He was co-maker with Neil Gaiman and maker of the 1996 BBC show sequential Neverwhere.
Henry took a stab at soul singing, showing up, for instance, as a support vocalist on Kate Bush’s collection The Red Shoes (1993) and, sponsored by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, at Amnesty International’s Big 3-0 raising support show.
He would later say that neither one of the moves indicated him at his best and that he felt generally OK with character parody. He would periodically come back to singing, performing in little neighborhood scenes in the West Midlands.
Henry came back to the BBC to do Lenny Henry in Pieces, a character-based improv show which was trailed by The Lenny Henry Show, in which he joined stand-up, character representations and tune spoofs.
In 2003, Henry was recorded in The Observer as one of the fifty most interesting acts in British parody. In 2004, he was recorded in The Sunday Times as the fifteenth most amusing dark entertainer ever.
Henry is related to the British Comic Relief philanthropy association, alongside his previous spouse, entertainer Dawn French, and Griff Rhys Jones, and has facilitated the show and furthermore exhibited shot reports from abroad on crafted by the philanthropy. He was the voice of the British talking check for about fourteen days in March 2003 with the help of Comic Relief.
Henry voiced Dre Head, the “contracted head” on the Knight Bus in the 2004 Alfonso Cuarón motion picture Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and read the book recording form of Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. He likewise voiced a character on the youngsters’ show Little Robots.
Henry showed up in ads for spread items in New Zealand, dispatched by the organization presently known as Fonterra, just as depicting Saint Peter in the Virgin Mobile promoting effort in South Africa. In the UK, he utilized his character of Theophilus P. Wildebeeste to publicize Alpen muesli and advanced the non-alcoholic ale, Kaliber.
In June 2001, for a BBC narrative, he cruised a trimaran from Plymouth to Antigua, Jamaica with yachtsman Tony Bullimore. His thought process was to as he put it, “have one final experience”. In 2005, he showed up in Birmingham, as a represent Jasper Carrott’s Rock with Laughter.
He showed up close by entertainers, for example, Bill Bailey, Jasper Carrott, Bonnie Tyler, Bobby Davro and the Lord of the Dance troupe. In 2006, Henry featured in the BBC program Berry’s Way. He did the voice of Dark Nebula in Kirby: Squeak Squad.
On 16 March 2007, Henry showed up as himself in a sketch with Catherine Tate, who showed up in the pretense of her character Geordie Georgie from The Catherine Tate Show. The sketch was made for the BBC Red Nose Day raising support program of 2007.
On 16 June 2007, Lenny showed up with Chris Tarrant and Sally James to display a 25th Anniversary scene of Tiswas. The show endured an hour and a half and included big names talking about their happiness regarding Tiswas as kids, just as appearances from children and individuals who had shown up on the first show. In the late spring of 2007, he introduced Lenny’s Britain, a parody narrative visit made with the Open University on BBC One on Tuesday evenings. In late 2007, he facilitated a phenomenal satire voyage through the UK.
In mid-2008, Henry’s arrangement Lenny henry.tv was communicated on BBC One. The program has a going with the site of a similar name and communicates unusual, abnormal and by and large entertaining on the web recordings and CCTV cuts.
He featured in the Radio 4 show Rudy’s Rare Records. On 31 December 2008 and 1 January 2009, he showed up on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny on BBC Two, singing piece of the melody Mercy alongside artist Duffy.
In January 2009, he showed up on the BBC’s satire appear, Live at The Apollo, in which he played host for the evening, presenting Andy Parsons and Ed Byrne, where he alluded to Wikipedia as “Wrongopedia” for containing erroneous data about his life.
In October 2009, Henry repeated his job of Deakus to include in parody shorts about the story composing close by Nina Wadia, Tara Palmer Tomkinson, and Stephen K. Amos. He likewise offers his very own composting tips and entertaining tales in the composing tips video cut on BBC crude words – story composing.
He supplies the voices of both Big and Small in the BBC CBeebies Children’s projects Big and Small. In 2010, Henry created and featured in a five-section web arrangement for the BBC Comedy site, Conversations with my Wife, about an anecdotal couple bantering over Skype while the spouse is away on business leaving the husband (played by Henry) to hold the fortification at home.
In 2008, he turned into the substance of spending inn administrator Premier Inn, and to date keeps on featuring in adverts for them. One of the adverts caused discussion and was prohibited from kids’ modifying hours.
The advert, from 2010, caricatured a notable scene from the film The Shining, with Lenny Henry parodying the scene initially featuring Jack Nicholson, by crushing an entryway with a hatchet and afterward pushing his head through the entryway saying: “Here’s Lenny.” In 2011, Henry displayed a Saturday night enchantment arrangement called The Magicians on BBC One.
The show returned in 2012, in any case, Henry was supplanted by Darren McMullen. In March 2011, he showed up with Angela Rippon, Samantha Womack, and Reggie Yates in the BBC raising money narrative for Comic Relief called Famous, Rich and in the Slums, where the four VIPs were sent to Kibera in Kenya, Africa’s biggest ghetto.
Henry was censured for his opening representation for the 2011 Comic Relief, during which he caricatures the film The King’s Speech and became eager with Colin Firth’s depiction of King George VI as he stammered over his discourse.
The Sun announced that the British Stammering Association had marked the sketch as “gross and appalling happiness at pointing out another person’s mishap”.
In 2014, Henry showed up in and delivered a play dependent on his radio show Rudy’s Rare Records, which played at the Birmingham Repertory Theater before proceeding onward to a run in London. In 2015, Danny and the Human Zoo an hour and a half movie for TV was made and appeared, composed by Henry and coordinated by Destiny Ekaragha, it was a fictionalized record of the previous’ life as a youngster in 1970s Dudley.
In November 2019, it was reported that Henry would visitor star in Spyfall, the two-section opening scene of Doctor Who’s twelfth resuscitated arrangement, set to start to communicate on New Year’s Day 2020.
Lenny Henry Shakespeare
In February 2009, Henry showed up in the title job in the Northern Broadsides creation of Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. Before the generation opened the chief Barrie Rutter said of the choice to cast him: “blades may be out at me or at Lenny. I couldn’t care less. This has come to fruition from a totally certifiable want to do a bit of dramatic work. Grisly heck, to what extent has the Donmar had Hollywood stars going there for £200? He’s six-foot-five. He’s wonderfully dark. Also, he’s Othello.”
Henry got boundless basic praise in the job. Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph said “This is one of the most astounding introductions in Shakespeare I have ever observed. It is difficult to laud also exceptionally Henry’s fearlessness in taking on so requesting and uncovered a job, and afterward performing it with such power and feeling.”
Michael Billington in The Guardian noticed, “Henry’s voice may not generally match the logical music of the section, yet there is basic respect to his presentation that contacts one”. Lynne Walker of The Independent said of Henry that his “enthusiastic dynamism is in no uncertainty. The furor inside his creative mind detonates into wrath and, at last, wretchedness. It is anything but an unobtrusive perusing yet it works effectively in this unique circumstance.”
Henry has said that he saw parallels among himself and Othello. “I’m accustomed to being the main dark individual in any place I go…There was never a dark or Asian executive when I went to the BBC. In the end, I thought ‘where are they all?’ I invested a great deal of energy on my own. Things have changed a piece, however seldom at the BBC do I meet anybody of shading in a place of intensity.”
The generation was booked to move toward the West End of London from 11 September to 12 December 2009, to be performed at the Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall. He was acquainted with Shakespeare when he made the 2006 Radio 4 arrangement Lenny and Will, which saw him going “looking for the enchantment of Shakespeare in execution”.
In November 2011, Henry made his presentation at the Royal National Theater in London in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, coordinated by Dominic Cooke, in which he played the character of Antipholus of Syracuse.
The generation was chosen to be communicated live to chosen films worldwide in March 2012 as a component of the National Theater Live program. Henry’s presentation increased positive surveys. Paul Taylor in The Independent composed that “Henry perfectly passes on the tragicomic situation of a guiltless abroad.”
The Lenny Henry Show
The Lenny Henry Show is an improv show highlighting Lenny Henry. It was initially communicated somewhere in the range of 1984 and 1988 and was later resuscitated twice, in 1995 and 2004–2005.
First episode date: 4 September 1984
Final episode date: 1988
Network: BBC One
Directors: Geoff Posner (1984–1988), Juliet May (1995), Michael Cumming (2004–2005)
Written by: Lenny Henry, Stan Hey
Lenny Henry Harry Potter
He played the character role of Dre Head in this film. Harry Potter discovers that Sirius Black has gotten away from the jail of Azkaban and is intending to execute him. In the meantime, Hagrid is troubled when his hippogriff, Buckbeak, is condemned to death.
Initial release: 31 May 2004 (United Kingdom)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Box office: 796.9 million USD
Budget: 130 million USD
Music composed by John Williams
Lenny Henry in Pieces
Funnies join Lenny Henry for a regular assortment of satire dramas and farces.
First episode date: 30 December 2000
Final episode date: 2 May 2003
Written by: Martin Trenaman
Networks: BBC, BBC One
Lenny Henry Memoir or Book
The tragic, motivational (and exceptionally amusing) story of the man who defeated so a lot, and won an extraordinary spot in a country’s heart.
‘A legitimate pleasure to peruse: fair, uncovering, human, and consistently, at its heart, interesting.’ NEIL GAIMAN
In his hotly anticipated collection of memoirs, Sir Lenny Henry recounts to the exceptional story of his initial years and unexpected ascent to popularity.
Brought into the world not long after his Jamaican guardians had landed in the Midlands, Lenny was raised as one of seven kin in a riotous working family unit, and conveyed into the world with his mum’s mantra of ‘H’integration! H’integration! H’integration!’ reverberating in his ears.
Be that as it may, 1970s Britain was a hard spot and a stupefying encounter for a solitary dark youngster. A characteristic capacity to make individuals giggle proved to be useful.
At school, it helped stifle the day by day bigot harassing. In the recreation center, it prompted long-lasting companionships and periodic snogs. Before long, it would put him in front of an audience at working men’s clubs and Black Country discotheques – before a solicitation to a TV tryout changed his life until the end of time.
BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week
Title Who am I, again?
Author Lenny Henry
Publisher Faber & Faber, 2019
ISBN 0571342620, 9780571342624
Length of 352 pages
Lenny Henry Movies and TV Shows
Movies
- Coast to Coast
- The Suicide Club
- Work Experience
- True Identity
- Famous Fred
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
- Penelope
- The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists
- Postman Pat: The Movie
TV Shows
- The Fosters
- Three of a Kind
- The Lenny Henry Show
- Comic Relief
- Alive and Kicking
- Bernard and the Genie
- In Dreams
- Chef!
- Hope and Glory
- Lenny Henry in Pieces
- lennyhenry.tv
- Big & Small
- Live at the Apollo
- Britain’s Classroom Heroes
- The Magicians
- Rich, Famous and in the Slums
- Jackanory Junior – “The Enormous Crocodile”
- The One Lenny Henry
- Operation Health for Comic Relief
- The Olivier Awards
- The Syndicate
- Danny and the Human Zoo
- Broadchurch
- The Long Song
- Doctor Who
Stage
- Othello
- The Comedy of Errors
- Fences
- Rudy’s Rare Records
- Educating Rita
- The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
