Author: Suren Prasad
Verbose stand-up comic with a Dickensian demeanour, Russell Edward Brand has an estimated net worth of £10 million.
Born on June 4, 1975 to photographer Ronald Henry Brand and Barbara Elizabeth Nichols in Essex, Russell Brand started his career at fifteen years of age as a humble film extra. In 1991, he left home to enroll in the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts, and later the Drama Centre, London.
He was scouted in 2000 at the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year final and became a video jockey at MTV the same year.
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Afterwards, Brand made a TV comedy documentary, RE:Brand, taking aim at cultural taboos. His radio career kick-started in 2002 on London’s indie rock station Xfm, with a Sunday afternoon show. He later achieved further popularity presenting Big Brother’s Big Mouth – a spin-off of Channel 4’s Big Brother – in 2004.
In 2006, he hosted The Russell Brand Show on BBC Radio, which attracted an average of 400,000 listeners per show. Brand also won the Time Out award for Best Stand-Up, a Loaded Laftas Award for Best Stand-Up as well as Best Newcomer at the British Comedy Awards that year.
Shame, his first nationwide tour, launched in 2006, followed by Russell Brand: Only Joking in 2007. The same year, he won Best Television Performer in a Non-Acting Role at the Annual Television and Radio Awards for The Russell Brand Show and landed his first major movie role in St Trinian’s.
Another of Brand’s successful television ventures was Channel 4’s Russell Brand’s Ponderland, which attracted over a million viewers and ran until 2008.
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The comedian, presenter and actor also earned praise in 2008 playing ‘rock God’ Aldous Snow in the hit romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshall and reprised his role alongside Jonah Hill in Get Him to the Greek (2010).
In 2009, Brand was host of the 2009 Video Music Awards in New York and returned to radio with a football talk show for Talksport alongside Noel Gallagher that same year, which boosted web traffic by 250 per cent.
Brand’s acting career encompasses Bedtime Stories (2008), The Tempest (2010), the 2011 Arthur remake, the voice of the Easter Bunny in Hop (2011) and Dr Nefario in Despicable Me and Despicable Me 2 (2010 and 2013). Hop was number one at the US box office on its opening weekend, earning $37.5 million.
In 2011, Brand won once again at the British Comedy Awards for Outstanding Contribution to Comedy as well as the ShoWest Award for Comedy Star of the Year. The same year, he also set up a production company called Branded Films, which operates out of California’s Warner Bros. studios.
The multi-faceted entertainer also appeared in the big screen adaptation of Rock of Ages (2012), the Broadway musical, and presented the 2012 MTV Movie Awards.
Brand’s writing success began with the two-part My Booky Wook series; the first was a huge hit in Britain and America. In 2008, he inked a further two-book, £1.8 million deal with HarperCollins and still writes occasional columns for The Guardian and New Statesman.
Since divorcing pop singer Katy Perry in 2012, he is reported to be dating Jemima Khan.
